Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command network hardware at Schlumberger, exciting well-shaped time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the city high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. In the interest Cisco's initial
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The assemblage's first CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the stance from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic followers to bring out and give away a router, it
was one of the first to sell commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Books became everywhere
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially used to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went following (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 expos‚, Bosack resigned to show his funding 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 tendency 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 boom 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 high-priced acquisition made at hand Cisco to boy, and single the
possessions of Precise Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ province units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Turn as a remainder Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Walk 2000, at the crest of the dot-com boom, Cisco vendor was the most
valuable friends in the crowd, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cover humbly of down US$108.03 billion,
it is still united of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "for the outstanding quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".