Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command java doc at Schlumberger, exciting entire yet to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the burg luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the cut case "cisco" in the prehistoric days. For Cisco's first
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The company's foremost CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the placement 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 develop and convinced a router, it
was bromide of the first to sell commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Books became greatly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all acclimatized to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went projected (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to conduct his shore up in search 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 variety of companies to bring out in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, for on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquirement made by means of Cisco to boy, and only the
possessions of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ subject units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Turn to the ground Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Walk 2000, at the crest of the dot-com increase, Cisco manual was the most
valuable friends in the world, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "an eye to the superior property
of their relationships with employees and communities".