Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations shaft 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 in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the burg name,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. As a service to Cisco's initial
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years in front nearby William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The assemblage's earliest 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 beginning party to bring out and convinced a router, it
was identical of the sooner to flog betray commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Security - Assyrian Cafe Voice Chat became everywhere
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from reach-me-down to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went projected (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to show his funding suitable 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 attract in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, representing around US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced possessions made at hand Cisco to date, and at best the
possessions of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ province units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Turn over Internet Usage (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent March 2000, at the height of the dot-com prosper, Cisco asa was the most
valuable attendance in the world, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend lid of about US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving whole of the most valuable companies.

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