Table Type Patterns (TTP) was developed by the ONF Forwarding Abstraction Working Group (FAWG) to solve the limitation of OpenFlow with respect to TCAM capabilities.

Older versions of OpenFlow (1.0, 1.1, and 1.2) were handicapped as they were not allowed to access the memory resource on the ASIC for simple forwarding applications such as routing since they utilized a single-table implementation that involved using the TCAMs for flows.

TTP utilizes the memory resources (VLAN, MAC, and IP tables) present on the ASIC to achieve this by distributing flows to suitable resources. This enhancement allowed the software layer to translate provisioned flows into single or multiple flow entries in the hardware. The ASIC architecture is required to be conformed in a TTP environment, enabling maximum scalability of SDN applications.