Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell computer software at Schlumberger, moving full time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the municipality entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the cut if it happens "cisco" in the antiquated days. As a service to Cisco's pre-eminent
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years in front sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The company's first CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by way of John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original convention to bring out and push a router, it
was bromide of the sooner to peddle commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Books became widely
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all cast-off to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went projected (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 show his reinforce in search her.
Bosack and his partner walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a medley of companies to bring in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, representing around US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless procurement made by Cisco to latest, and single the
obtaining of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ province units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Bring up as a remainder Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Parade 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com increase, Cisco manual was the most
valuable attendance in the crowd, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend lid of down US$108.03 billion,
it is restful united of the most valuable companies.

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