Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern linux doc at Schlumberger, exciting entire time to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the burg name,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the put down instance "cisco" in the prehistoric days. As a service to Cisco's initial
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years before by William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The presence's beginning CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the stance from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning convention to develop and push a router, it
was one of the oldest to retail commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Security became everywhere
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily acclimatized to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went public (with a merchandise 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 exhibit his support for her.
Bosack and his partner 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 attract in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, in the course of around US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless procurement made by means of Cisco to latest, and at best the
obtaining of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ business units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Turn in excess of Internet Conduct (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Cortege 2000, at the apex of the dot-com bang, Cisco asa was the most
valuable friends in the existence, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is restful whole of the most valuable companies.

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