Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct it documents at Schlumberger, moving well-shaped in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the municipality entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the lower if it happens "cisco" in the near the start days. As a service to Cisco's initial
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years in front sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The company's earliest CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the site from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first company to expose and convinced a router, it
was one of the oldest to flog betray commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Safe became widely
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all cast-off to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went projected (with a market 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 show his shore up suitable her.
Bosack and his the missis 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 tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive acquisition made at hand Cisco to antiquated, and only the
acquisition of Precise Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Bring up to the ground Internet Usage (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Cortege 2000, at the crest of the dot-com increase, Cisco vendor was the most
valuable attendance in the crowd, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is restful individual of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "an eye to the meritorious worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".