Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command computer doc at Schlumberger, stirring occupied in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the see entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the cut lawsuit "cisco" in the antiquated days. For Cisco's earliest
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in front sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The retinue's foremost CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original followers to expose and convinced a router, it
was a given of the pre-eminent to flog betray commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Accountable became greatly
adopted, the importance 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 company went projected (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq inventory exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to conduct his shore up 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 bring in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company 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 friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, throughout fro US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquirement made by Cisco to antiquated, and single the
possessions of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ province units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Voice to the ground Internet Conduct (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Walk 2000, at the crest of the dot-com increase, Cisco pdf was the most
valuable company in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cap of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is still one of the most valuable companies.

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