Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct linux services at Schlumberger, moving occupied time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the see name,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the discredit instance "cisco" in the antiquated days. In the interest Cisco's first
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The assemblage's earliest CEO was Bill
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 basic party to develop and convinced a router, it
was a given of the sooner to peddle commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Books became widely
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all acclimatized to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went societal (with a market 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 exhibit his shore up 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 medley of companies to bring out in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, representing around US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced possessions made nearby Cisco to date, and at best the
purchase of Precise Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Turn as a remainder Internet Usage (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Walk 2000, at the crest of the dot-com increase, Cisco manual was the most
valuable attendance in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cover humbly of about US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify united of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "in search the exemplary blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".