Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell linux hardware at Schlumberger, stirring occupied for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the burg name,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the discredit case "cisco" in the prehistoric days. In the interest Cisco's earliest
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years earlier on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The company's beginning CEO was Banknote
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 first party to expose and push a router, it
was one of the oldest to sell commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Docs became greatly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all acclimatized to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went projected (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the expos‚, Bosack resigned to express his support in search her.
Bosack and his old lady 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 assemblage 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 assemblage located in Petaluma, California, representing on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquirement made at hand Cisco to latest, and simply the
purchase of Precise Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ business units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Bring up as a remainder Internet Protocol (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Cortege 2000, at the apex of the dot-com prosper, Cisco system was the most
valuable friends in the world, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving whole of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "in behalf of the exemplary worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".