Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command linux soft at Schlumberger, stirring entire yet to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the burg name,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the lower instance "cisco" in the near the start days. Instead of Cisco's earliest
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years in the vanguard sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The retinue's first CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning followers to expose and sell a router, it
was one of the sooner to sell commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Accountable became thoroughly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from reach-me-down to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went public (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to exhibit his support in compensation 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 medley of companies to attract in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Various 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, throughout fro US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made by Cisco to boy, and only the
obtaining of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ province units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Voice over Internet Conduct (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Cortege 2000, at the apex of the dot-com bang, Cisco voip was the most
valuable friends in the crowd, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend exceed of down US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving one of the most valuable companies.

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