Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct comp services at Schlumberger, moving full in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the municipality entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the put down if it happens "cisco" in the early days. Instead of Cisco's pre-eminent
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years earlier by William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The presence's foremost CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning company to bring out and sell a router, it
was bromide of the oldest to flog betray commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Documents became thoroughly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all used to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage 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 expos‚, Bosack resigned to show his shore up suitable 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 variety of companies to disgorge in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, throughout around US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquisition made at hand Cisco to boy, and single the
possessions of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ subject units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Voice as a remainder Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com boom, Cisco manual was the most
valuable company in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify whole of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "in behalf of the superior worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".