Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern java services at Schlumberger, exciting full time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the municipality name,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the put down instance "cisco" in the early days. In the interest Cisco's earliest
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years in the vanguard nearby William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The presence's first CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the site from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning party to bring out and push a router, it
was identical of the pre-eminent to retail commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Docs became thoroughly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all cast-off to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went societal (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 newscast, Bosack resigned to show 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 attract in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, for fro US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market acquisition made by means of Cisco to latest, and single the
purchase of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ subject units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Voice over Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com prosper, Cisco ios was the most
valuable attendance in the existence, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market lid of about US$108.03 billion,
it is restful whole of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "for the exemplary property
of their relationships with employees and communities".