Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct comp software at Schlumberger, moving occupied in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the see high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit lawsuit "cisco" in the early days. In the interest Cisco's earliest
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years in the vanguard on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The presence's foremost CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the site from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning convention to develop and give away a router, it
was identical of the sooner to sell commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Suite became widely
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially reach-me-down to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage 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 announcement, Bosack resigned to express his support in compensation 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 genus of companies to bring out in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, in the course of on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive acquirement made by means of Cisco to boy, and at best the
acquisition of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Utter over Internet Usage (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Walk 2000, at the apex of the dot-com boom, Cisco voip was the most
valuable friends in the the world at large, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market cap of about US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "for the exemplary quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".