Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern linux software at Schlumberger, moving full time to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the city high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. As a service to Cisco's pre-eminent
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years in front nearby William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The retinue's foremost CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the stance from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic company to evolve and give away a router, it
was one of the first to retail commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Docs became greatly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily acclimatized to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went following (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to show his reinforce suitable her.
Bosack and his wife walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a variety of companies to attract in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, throughout about US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market possessions made at hand Cisco to latest, and at best the
purchase of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Voice in excess of Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Parade 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco pdf was the most
valuable attendance in the existence, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk cap of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving one of the most valuable companies.

The company was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "an eye to the exemplary worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".