  I have proposed a measure for the cage effect in glass forming systems. A
binary mixture of hard disks is numerically studied as a model glass former. A
network is constructed on the basis of the colliding pairs of disks. A rigidity
matrix is formed from the isostatic (rigid) sub--network, corresponding to a
cage. The determinant of the matrix changes its sign when an uncaging event
occurs. Time evolution of the number of the uncaging events is determined
numerically. I have found that there is a gap in the uncaging timescales
between the cages involving different numbers of disks. Caging of one disk by
two neighboring disks sustains for a longer time as compared with other cages
involving more than one disk. This gap causes two--step relaxation of this
system.
