Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern it hardware at Schlumberger, stirring well-shaped time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the see entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the put down instance "cisco" in the prehistoric days. As a service to Cisco's initial
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years in front nearby William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The company's first CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by way of John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first party to develop and convinced a router, it
was a given of the first to peddle commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Guide became greatly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from cast-off to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went following (with a merchandise 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 express his shore up in compensation 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 medley of companies to disgorge in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity 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 acquirement made by Cisco to latest, and single the
obtaining of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ subject units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Turn to the ground Internet Conduct (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent March 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com boom, Cisco system was the most
valuable attendance in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk lid of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is restful one of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "for the outstanding worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".