Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell computer services at Schlumberger, exciting full for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the see name,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit instance "cisco" in the antiquated days. Instead of Cisco's first
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The presence's foremost CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the stance from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic party to evolve and convinced a router, it
was identical of the sooner to sell commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Accountable became widely
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily acclimatized to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went following (with a market 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 conduct his reinforce for her.
Bosack and his the missis 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 proclivity 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 explosion in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, in the course of fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced possessions made at hand Cisco to antiquated, and at best the
purchase of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Turn to the ground Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Parade 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com boom, Cisco system was the most
valuable attendance in the the world at large, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market lid of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify individual of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "in behalf of the exemplary blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".