A method of controlling the flow of an amount of data from a sending peer to a receiving peer of a predetermined communication protocol is described. The air confluent nozzle produces a transport flow by joining together primary and secondary air jets J1 and J2 used for winnowing the shredded tobacco, and the transport flow causes a shred mixture obtained by the winnowing to be conveyed along a conveyance surface toward a tobacco band. The saturation element is disposed in a forward path of a positive-feedback minor loop, whereas the low-pass element is disposed in a feedback path of the positive-feedback minor loop. If the voltage variation information indicates that the voltage detected by the voltage variation detector varies, the airbag controller controls the airbag based on deploymentnon-deployment information stored in the storage device immediately before the airbag controller receives the voltage variation information indicating that the voltage detected by voltage variation detector varies. The third stage is an Erbium-doped solid-state crystalline-host laser whose output wavelength is in the eyesafe region. Based on the signal path change information, the signal inputting device adaptively changes a signal path between the signal outputting device and the signal inputting device.