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 direct it documents at Schlumberger, compelling full for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the see luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the early days. As a service to Cisco's initial
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic followers to bring out and push a router, it
was one of the pre-eminent to flog betray commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Security became thoroughly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from reach-me-down to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went projected (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 news, Bosack resigned to express 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 tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, throughout around US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market acquisition made by Cisco to latest, and simply the
acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Bring up over Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Parade 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco guide was the most
valuable gathering in the existence, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange lid of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "an eye to the exemplary blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".