Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct it hard at Schlumberger, compelling full yet to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the municipality luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the lower if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. In the interest Cisco's earliest
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The assemblage's foremost CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first convention to develop and sell a router, it
was bromide of the pre-eminent to retail commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Guide became everywhere
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all cast-off to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went following (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq inventory exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to exhibit his reinforce in search her.
Bosack and his old lady 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 in products and ingenuity 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 blast in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, for around US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless possessions made nearby Cisco to latest, and only the
acquisition of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ subject units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Utter as a remainder Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com bang, Cisco manual was the most
valuable attendance in the the world at large, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cap of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving individual of the most valuable companies.

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