Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell it documents at Schlumberger, moving occupied in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the city luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the lower case "cisco" in the early days. In the interest Cisco's pre-eminent
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The presence's beginning CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the placement 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 company to bring out and push a router, it
was identical of the sooner to sell commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Documents became thoroughly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from cast-off to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went societal (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to conduct his funding suitable 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 genus of companies to disgorge in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, for fro US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made by Cisco to antiquated, and at best the
obtaining of Precise Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Utter in excess of Internet Conduct (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Walk 2000, at the apex of the dot-com bang, Cisco asa was the most
valuable friends in the crowd, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market cover humbly of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is restful whole of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "in search the superior blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".