Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell linux ppt at Schlumberger, stirring full for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the see name,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the lower lawsuit "cisco" in the near the start days. For Cisco's pre-eminent
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years in the vanguard on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The assemblage's first CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original company to develop and push a router, it
was a given of the oldest to retail commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Accountable became greatly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially reach-me-down to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went public (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 announcement, Bosack resigned to conduct his support for 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 variety of companies to disgorge in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, for on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive possessions made nearby Cisco to latest, and single the
acquisition of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ province units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Utter to the ground Internet Protocol (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late March 2000, at the crest of the dot-com boom, Cisco manual was the most
valuable attendance in the the world at large, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk lid of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify individual of the most valuable companies.

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