Embodiments in accordance with the present invention relate to determination of a connecting status of a device in a system constituted by a plurality of devices connected via information transmission path in a loop, such as fibre channel arbitrated loop. Particular embodiments of the present invention may help to prevent a bypassed device from performing an improper process at a loop initialization process. According to one embodiment, each device checks its own bypass status at a loop initialization process. The device which has become a loop master determines that it is not bypassed by itself. In an address obtaining step, the device checks whether or not the device itself can actually obtain the address which the device tried to obtain by means of a bit map of the received frame and determines that the device is not bypassed if the address is not obtained. The device checks whether or not the address which has been stored in a predetermined position of a position map exists. If it does not exist, the device determines that it is bypassed.