Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell java software at Schlumberger, moving entire for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the city luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the cut if it happens "cisco" in the antiquated days. For Cisco's pre-eminent
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years in front on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The company's foremost CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic party to develop and convinced a router, it
was a given of the first to peddle commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Suite became greatly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all reach-me-down to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went projected (with a stock exchange 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 conduct his funding for her.
Bosack and his the missis 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 ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, representing fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquirement made nearby Cisco to latest, and single the
obtaining of Precise Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Utter to the ground Internet Protocol (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable March 2000, at the apex of the dot-com increase, Cisco vendor was the most
valuable gathering in the the world at large, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cover humbly of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving united of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "an eye to the superior quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".