Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell it software at Schlumberger, compelling entire for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the municipality name,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the cut instance "cisco" in the early days. As a service to Cisco's pre-eminent
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years in the vanguard on William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The company'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 basic company to evolve and push a router, it
was one of the first to flog betray commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Books became widely
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily acclimatized to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went projected (with a superstore 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 conduct his shore up in search 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 bring out in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, representing fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced possessions made by Cisco to date, and only the
possessions of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ province units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Bring up over Internet Usage (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable March 2000, at the height of the dot-com prosper, Cisco vendor was the most
valuable attendance in the world, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving united of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "in behalf of the superior quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".