Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command network ppt at Schlumberger, stirring entire for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the city entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the cut lawsuit "cisco" in the early days. As a service to Cisco's first
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years before nearby William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The assemblage's earliest CEO was Bill
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 develop and push a router, it
was a given of the oldest to flog betray commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Safe became greatly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially used to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went public (with a market 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 show his funding 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 selection of companies to bring out in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, throughout fro US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless procurement made nearby Cisco to latest, and single the
obtaining of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Utter to the ground Internet Conduct (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com bang, Cisco manual was the most
valuable gathering in the world, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk exceed of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving one of the most valuable companies.

The circle 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".