Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern java services at Schlumberger, exciting full time to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the municipality entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit lawsuit "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's first
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years earlier sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The company's beginning CEO was Bill
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 basic followers to expose and push a router, it
was identical of the pre-eminent to flog betray commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Manual became everywhere
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially reach-me-down to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went projected (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to exhibit his support 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 medley of companies to bring out in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquisition made by Cisco to antiquated, and only the
possessions of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Bring up in excess of Internet Protocol (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent March 2000, at the height of the dot-com prosper, Cisco firewall was the most
valuable attendance in the crowd, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cover humbly of about US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "for the outstanding blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".