-Hourglass Howto
+Hourglass HOWTO
===============
-This is a collection of programs (scripts) that implement an automated
-network access control policy. The general idea is to declare the open
-and close times for each weekday as well as a time limit of
-accumulated usage during the open time.
+This project is a collection of programs (scripts) that implement an
+automated network access control policy, aptly named "Hourglass". The
+general idea is to have the network open or closed on weekly policy
+schedule, with an easy-to-use interface for adhoc adjustments.
+
+Overview
+--------
+
+The Hourglass policy setting includes open and close times separately
+for each weekday, as well as limits of the accumulated usage during
+the open times. For example, one could set up the network to be open
+between 11am and 4pm each day and each day allow for 2 hours of usage.
+
+.Hourglass System Overview
+image::hourglass-overview.png[align="center"]
+
+Network "usage" is determine by the "Hourglass listener daemon" that
+is set up to review network traffic and continuously register
+per-minute packet count measures.
+
+The "Hourglass policy bot" is a per-minute "cron bot" that looks at
+the recent succession of measures to decide whether or not "usage" is
+happening and accumulate usage periods into the current daily usage
+time measure. It is the policy contol bot that performs the control
+actions of closing or opening the network for traffic.
+
+The Hourglass web service provides an HTTP based operator interface
+for editing the applicable policy.
+
+
+Installing Hourglass
+--------------------
+
-For example, that the network should be open between 3pm and 8pm and
-allow for 2 hours of usage within those times.
The Hourglass system includes four components:
3. Continuous determination of control action
4. Control actuator
-.Dependencies
-
-newlisp::
-ipset::
-iptables::
Hourglass User Interface
------------------------