Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command java hard at Schlumberger, moving full for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the see luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the lower if it happens "cisco" in the early days. In the interest Cisco's first
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years before sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The retinue's first CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic party to evolve and give away a router, it
was identical of the oldest to retail commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Accountable became greatly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all reach-me-down to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went projected (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 newscast, Bosack resigned to show his reinforce suitable 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 attract in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, throughout around US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive acquirement made by Cisco to latest, and simply the
possessions of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ subject units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Bring up in excess of Internet Usage (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Parade 2000, at the height of the dot-com increase, Cisco firewall 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 vend lid of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving one of the most valuable companies.

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