Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple 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 it soft at Schlumberger, compelling full time to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the city entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's pre-eminent
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years in front sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The assemblage's foremost 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 beginning party to develop and give away a router, it
was bromide of the pre-eminent to retail commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Security became everywhere
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially acclimatized to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went societal (with a merchandise 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 funding suitable 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 bring out in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, for fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquisition made at hand Cisco to date, and simply the
acquisition of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ subject units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Voice as a remainder Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Parade 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com increase, Cisco system was the most
valuable gathering in the world, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend lid of about US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual 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 worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".