Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of 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 computer hardware at Schlumberger, compelling entire for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the city luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the discredit instance "cisco" in the early days. As a service to Cisco's earliest
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years in the vanguard on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The assemblage's foremost CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first followers to develop and sell a router, it
was a given of the first to retail commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Security became widely
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily acclimatized to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went public (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 funding in compensation 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 medley of companies to disgorge in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, representing about US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquisition made nearby Cisco to date, and single the
possessions of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ subject units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Voice to the ground Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Cortege 2000, at the crest of the dot-com prosper, Cisco ios was the most
valuable gathering in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk cap of about US$108.03 billion,
it is still whole of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "in behalf of the exemplary property
of their relationships with employees and communities".