Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke 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 tell java soft at Schlumberger, stirring entire in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the city entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the discredit instance "cisco" in the early days. In the interest Cisco's initial
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years earlier nearby William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The assemblage's earliest CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the position 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 expose and sell a router, it
was one of the pre-eminent to peddle commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Docs became widely
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily reach-me-down to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went following (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to express his support 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 disgorge in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, throughout around US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquisition made by Cisco to boy, and at best the
possessions of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Voice over Internet Conduct (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com boom, Cisco doc was the most
valuable attendance in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market cap of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is restful united of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "an eye to the meritorious quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".