Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern linux soft at Schlumberger, moving well-shaped in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the see entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the discredit case "cisco" in the early days. In the interest Cisco's initial
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years earlier nearby William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The assemblage's earliest CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original party to develop and push a router, it
was one of the pre-eminent to sell commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Manual became greatly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially cast-off to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went public (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq inventory exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to show his support suitable her.
Bosack and his wife 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 attract in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, in the course of around US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market acquisition made at hand Cisco to date, and single the
acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Turn over Internet Usage (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com prosper, Cisco pdf was the most
valuable gathering in the crowd, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend lid of down US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving one of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "for the superior worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".