Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct linux ppt at Schlumberger, stirring well-shaped for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the municipality entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the discredit case "cisco" in the prehistoric days. Instead of Cisco's initial
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years before by William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The retinue's beginning CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first party to develop and give away a router, it
was one of the oldest to flog betray commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Accountable became thoroughly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially acclimatized to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went public (with a merchandise 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 reinforce suitable 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 genus of companies to bring in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, in the course of around US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive possessions made nearby Cisco to antiquated, and simply the
acquisition of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Bring up over Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late March 2000, at the apex of the dot-com increase, Cisco ios 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 exchange cap of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving united of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "an eye to the exemplary blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".