Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several 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 command comp software at Schlumberger, stirring entire in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the burg luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the cut instance "cisco" in the near the start days. For Cisco's first
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years before by William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the site from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by way of John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first party to develop and convinced a router, it
was a given of the oldest to flog betray commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Accountable became thoroughly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all used to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went following (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to conduct his support 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 selection of companies to bring in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, for around US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquirement made nearby Cisco to antiquated, and single the
acquisition of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ province units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Turn to the ground Internet Protocol (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Parade 2000, at the crest of the dot-com prosper, Cisco firewall was the most
valuable company in the world, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cover humbly of down US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify one of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "for the exemplary property
of their relationships with employees and communities".