Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell comp ppt at Schlumberger, moving full in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the burg high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the lower instance "cisco" in the antiquated days. Instead of Cisco's earliest
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years earlier sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The company's first CEO was Tab
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 party to expose and convinced a router, it
was one of the sooner to retail commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Documents became widely
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from reach-me-down to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went projected (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 announcement, Bosack resigned to exhibit his shore up suitable her.
Bosack and his partner 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 disgorge in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, in the course of around US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive acquirement made nearby Cisco to antiquated, and single the
purchase of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Turn in excess of Internet Conduct (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent March 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com boom, Cisco doc was the most
valuable gathering in the world, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market exceed of about US$108.03 billion,
it is restful whole of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "in behalf of the outstanding property
of their relationships with employees and communities".