Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern linux soft at Schlumberger, moving entire time to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the city high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the lower case "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's pre-eminent
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in the vanguard on William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The assemblage's first CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first company to develop and push a router, it
was bromide of the pre-eminent to flog betray commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Safe became thoroughly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from reach-me-down to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went following (with a merchandise 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 funding in compensation 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 variety of companies to bring in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, in the course of about US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced procurement made by means of Cisco to antiquated, and single the
possessions of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ subject units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Bring up as a remainder Internet Protocol (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Cortege 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco doc was the most
valuable company in the existence, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk cap of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is still one of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "in search the exemplary worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".