Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern it doc at Schlumberger, compelling entire yet to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the see luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the early days. In the interest Cisco's earliest
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years earlier by William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The presence's beginning CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the stance from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first followers to expose and push a router, it
was one of the first to peddle commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Documents became greatly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from used to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went following (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to exhibit 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 attract in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, in the course of around US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made by means of Cisco to antiquated, and at best the
obtaining of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ province units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Turn in excess of Internet Conduct (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory March 2000, at the apex of the dot-com increase, Cisco vendor was the most
valuable company in the existence, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cover humbly of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is still one of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "in search the outstanding property
of their relationships with employees and communities".