Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct java hardware at Schlumberger, compelling occupied in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the city entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the discredit lawsuit "cisco" in the prehistoric days. For Cisco's earliest
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years earlier sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning company to develop and convinced a router, it
was identical of the sooner to sell commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Docs became thoroughly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all acclimatized to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went following (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to exhibit his reinforce for 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 medley of companies to disgorge in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, for on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced possessions made nearby Cisco to date, and simply the
purchase of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ province units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Turn over Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Parade 2000, at the crest of the dot-com bang, Cisco doc was the most
valuable company in the the world at large, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving whole of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "in search the outstanding property
of their relationships with employees and communities".