INDAX: An Operational Interactive Cabletext System

INDAX is a local area home information system developed by Cox Cable Communications, Inc. for the delivery of videotex services to residential Customers. The large bandwidth provided by this medium allows integration of one-way (teletext) with two-way (videotext) transmissions into a cohesive delivery vehicle. As a data delivery mechanism, INDAX is well suited to many different types of servies. Among the earliest service offerings are generalized information retrieval and transaction services such as home banking and shopping. Implementation and traffic characteristics of these services are described in the following sections. In addition, INDAX supports interactive entertainment options such as opinion polling in conjunction with the standard entertainment programming. Status monitoring and control services such as security monitoring and energy management can also be delivered via INDAX. While the traffic model described is oriented towards a residential service, the modular system architecture readily supports differing traffic statistics by the addition of communications and processing modules.