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 direct computer hardware at Schlumberger, compelling occupied in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the city high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the cut case "cisco" in the early days. For Cisco's pre-eminent
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years earlier sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The assemblage's earliest CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the site 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 expose and convinced a router, it
was a given of the pre-eminent to peddle commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Books became widely
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 company went societal (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the expos‚, Bosack resigned to express 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 variety of companies to disgorge in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, for on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless procurement made by means of Cisco to boy, and simply the
acquisition of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Turn as a remainder Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable March 2000, at the height of the dot-com bang, Cisco guide was the most
valuable company in the crowd, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cover humbly of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify united of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "an eye to the exemplary blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".