The fixing apparatus used in an image forming apparatus and fixing an image on a recording medium, the fixing apparatus is provided with: a flash lamp that emits flash light for fixing the image; and a reflection member that has a reflection surface reflecting the flash light emitted from the flash lamp to the recording medium. The ion exchange resins can be regenerated anew and reused by washing the resins with various wash solutions. On the transmit side, an input data stream in a tunnelled format containing the user data to be transmitted is received, and a breakout device is operative to extract the user data from the input data stream and to output the extracted user data to the transmitter, which transmits the user data in the adapted format.