Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command it soft at Schlumberger, compelling well-shaped time to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the municipality entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the cut instance "cisco" in the prehistoric days. In the interest Cisco's first
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before nearby William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The presence's foremost CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original party to develop and sell a router, it
was one of the oldest to retail commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Docs became widely
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily reach-me-down to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went projected (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the expos‚, Bosack resigned to express his shore up in search her.
Bosack and his old lady walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a variety of companies to bring out in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made nearby Cisco to date, and simply the
possessions of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ province units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Utter over Internet Protocol (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Cortege 2000, at the crest of the dot-com prosper, Cisco guide was the most
valuable attendance in the existence, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "in behalf of the exemplary blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".