Denis Bence

He first began his higher education at medical school, but emigrated in 1956; he continued his medical studies in Edinburgh for 3 years, and finally began studying electrical engineering. He returned home after 8 years.

He became one of the operators of the URAL-2 type computer at the Várbel branch of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA), and then - now as an employee of the Computer Science and Automation Research Institute (SZTAKI) - he worked as a member of the staff trained in Frankfurt on the CDC3300 type scientific mainframe. He was also the owner of the MTA's first terminal network, which consisted of four UT200 CDC terminals. (The use of the domestic telephone network for data transmission, which was still starting to be modest at that time, was a real challenge: it required solid knowledge, perseverance and commitment on his part in order to reliably operate the connections established nationwide.)
From the late 1970s, he participated in the development of the multiprocessor MS-700 network switching equipment. He carried out the widespread deployment and operation of the X.25-based research network and the ELLA mail system.
Later, he became an important player in the development of the IIF (Information Infrastructure Development) network.
In the 1990s, he was responsible for the continuous migration of endpoints to TCP/IP by installing SZTAKI-developed NETBIOS GATEWAYS and IP ROUTERS (he maintained contact with hundreds of endpoint users and resolved a wide variety of problems). His work in the field of computer networks significantly shortened the time for the introduction of the domestic Internet.