Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell computer soft at Schlumberger, exciting occupied time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the burg entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the cut if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. As a service to Cisco's first
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years earlier nearby William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Bill
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 original followers to bring out and push a router, it
was identical of the pre-eminent to retail commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Manual became thoroughly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially used to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went projected (with a superstore 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 conduct his reinforce in search her.
Bosack and his the missis 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 in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several 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 society located in Petaluma, California, for on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made by means of Cisco to antiquated, and single the
purchase of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ business units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Utter in excess of Internet Protocol (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Cortege 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco voip was the most
valuable company in the world, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving one of the most valuable companies.

The company was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "in behalf of the exemplary property
of their relationships with employees and communities".