Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke 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 direct it software at Schlumberger, exciting entire yet to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the see entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the cut case "cisco" in the early days. Instead of Cisco's initial
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in the vanguard nearby William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The company's foremost CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic party to expose and sell a router, it
was identical of the first to peddle commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Manual became widely
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially used to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went projected (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq inventory exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to conduct his funding in search 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 genus of companies to attract in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, throughout around US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market acquirement made at hand Cisco to antiquated, and at best the
acquisition of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ subject units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Utter in excess of Internet Protocol (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable March 2000, at the height of the dot-com prosper, Cisco asa was the most
valuable company in the world, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend exceed of down US$108.03 billion,
it is still united of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "an eye to the outstanding worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".