Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct linux documents at Schlumberger, moving full time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the city name,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. As a service to Cisco's initial
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The assemblage's earliest CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning party to develop and sell a router, it
was identical of the first to flog betray commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Security became greatly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from used to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went following (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to exhibit his shore up in compensation 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 disgorge in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Several 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 high-priced acquirement made by means of Cisco to antiquated, and only the
acquisition of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Utter in excess of Internet Protocol (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable March 2000, at the apex of the dot-com bang, Cisco system was the most
valuable company in the existence, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk exceed of about 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 pay respect companies "in search the superior quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".