Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command network hardware at Schlumberger, exciting full yet to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the city entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the cut case "cisco" in the prehistoric days. In the interest Cisco's earliest
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years before by William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the placement 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 basic followers to evolve and sell a router, it
was a given of the pre-eminent to retail commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Safe became everywhere
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all used to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went public (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq inventory exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to conduct his shore up for 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 assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, in the course of around US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive possessions made at hand Cisco to boy, and single the
obtaining of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ subject units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Turn over Internet Conduct (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory March 2000, at the crest of the dot-com boom, Cisco ios was the most
valuable friends in the crowd, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend lid of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is still whole of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "in search the meritorious worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".