Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct linux doc at Schlumberger, moving occupied time to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the municipality high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit case "cisco" in the prehistoric days. In the interest Cisco's first
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years in front nearby William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The retinue's foremost CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the position 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 basic convention to bring out and convinced a router, it
was bromide of the pre-eminent to flog betray commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Suite became everywhere
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially reach-me-down to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went societal (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq inventory exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to show 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 variety of companies to bring out in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company 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 corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, in the course of on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced procurement made nearby Cisco to date, and at best the
acquisition of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ business units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Utter as a remainder Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Walk 2000, at the apex of the dot-com boom, Cisco guide was the most
valuable attendance in the the world at large, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market exceed of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is still whole of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "for the outstanding blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".