Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell network doc at Schlumberger, exciting occupied for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the burg entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the lower if it happens "cisco" in the antiquated days. As a service to Cisco's pre-eminent
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years earlier nearby William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The retinue's beginning CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original party to bring out and push a router, it
was a given of the oldest 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 from reach-me-down to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went public (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to conduct his support for 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 selection of companies to attract in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, in the course of about US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquirement made by means of Cisco to boy, and single the
obtaining of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ business units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Turn over Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Parade 2000, at the height of the dot-com bang, Cisco system was the most
valuable company in the world, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend exceed of down US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving one of the most valuable companies.

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