This reports whether the security association operates in transport mode, protecting only the payload between two hosts, or tunnel mode, encapsulating entire IP packets between gateways, or is unrestricted (any). For a site-to-site VPN, admins expect this to read tunnel; seeing transport unexpectedly on what should be a gateway-to-gateway link would indicate a configuration problem. A branch-office-to-headquarters SA would typically show ntqVPNMode as tunnel, encapsulating the branch's internal traffic inside a new IP header addressed to headquarters.