Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern it hardware at Schlumberger, stirring occupied yet to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the burg name,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the put down case "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's earliest
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years earlier by William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The retinue's beginning CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the site 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 company to expose and give away a router, it
was a given of the pre-eminent to sell commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Guide became thoroughly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily used to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went public (with a market 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 exhibit his funding for 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 selection of companies to attract in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, in the course of about US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive procurement made by Cisco to antiquated, and only the
obtaining of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ province units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Utter over Internet Conduct (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com increase, Cisco pdf was the most
valuable friends in the the world at large, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend lid of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is restful one of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "in search the exemplary quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".