Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell java hard at Schlumberger, stirring occupied yet to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the burg entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit case "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's initial
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years in the vanguard sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The company'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 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first convention to bring out and convinced a router, it
was identical of the oldest to sell commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Documents became greatly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from cast-off to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went societal (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to show his support in compensation her.
Bosack and his partner walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a variety of companies to bring in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, in the course of on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive acquirement made by means of Cisco to boy, and simply the
obtaining of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ business units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Bring up over Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Parade 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco vendor 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 exchange cap of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify whole of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "for the outstanding quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".