Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern computer doc at Schlumberger, compelling full time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the burg luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the lower case "cisco" in the prehistoric days. In the interest Cisco's initial
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years earlier by William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The company's beginning CEO was Bill
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 first followers to evolve and convinced a router, it
was identical of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Security became greatly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily reach-me-down to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went projected (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to conduct his support in compensation 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 medley of companies to disgorge in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, throughout about US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquisition made by means of Cisco to boy, and only the
possessions of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ subject units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Utter over Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Walk 2000, at the apex of the dot-com increase, Cisco vendor was the most
valuable friends in the crowd, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cap of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving whole 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 "for the superior property
of their relationships with employees and communities".