Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command java hardware at Schlumberger, moving full in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the city name,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the put down lawsuit "cisco" in the prehistoric days. Instead of Cisco's initial
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before by William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The assemblage's earliest CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by way of John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original convention to expose and push a router, it
was bromide of the sooner to flog betray commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Books became everywhere
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily cast-off to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went public (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 expos‚, Bosack resigned to express his funding in search her.
Bosack and his partner 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 talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, representing around US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive acquisition made by Cisco to date, and at best the
acquisition of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Turn in excess of Internet Conduct (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com bang, Cisco asa was the most
valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange lid of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "for the exemplary worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".