Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command it hardware at Schlumberger, stirring full in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the see high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the lower case "cisco" in the prehistoric days. Instead of Cisco's earliest
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in front sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The assemblage's beginning CEO was Tab
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 original party to develop and convinced a router, it
was identical of the sooner to sell commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Safe became widely
adopted, the account 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 superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to exhibit his reinforce 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 bring out in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, in the course of fro US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market acquisition made by Cisco to boy, and single the
obtaining of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ province units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Turn as a remainder Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Walk 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com boom, Cisco vendor was the most
valuable attendance in the existence, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk exceed of about US$108.03 billion,
it is restful united of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "an eye to the exemplary blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".