Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command it documents at Schlumberger, moving full time to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the municipality entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the put down if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. For Cisco's earliest
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The assemblage's beginning 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 company to bring out and convinced a router, it
was a given of the first to flog betray commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Guide became widely
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially used to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went following (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to show his shore up suitable her.
Bosack and his wife 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 in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, representing around US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquisition made nearby Cisco to date, and only the
purchase of Precise Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ subject units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Utter as a remainder Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Parade 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com boom, Cisco asa was the most
valuable gathering in the world, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cover humbly of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is still one of the most valuable companies.

The company was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "for the superior quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".