Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern linux doc at Schlumberger, exciting full for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the burg entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the discredit case "cisco" in the antiquated days. For Cisco's pre-eminent
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in front on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The presence'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 by way of John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first followers to evolve and sell a router, it
was identical of the pre-eminent to peddle commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Books became greatly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially acclimatized to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went public (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the expos‚, Bosack resigned to express his reinforce in search 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 disgorge in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, representing on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market acquisition made by means of Cisco to antiquated, and at best the
acquisition of Precise Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ province units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Utter to the ground Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Walk 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com bang, Cisco asa was the most
valuable gathering in the the world at large, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend lid of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is still one of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "in search the meritorious blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".