Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern network soft at Schlumberger, stirring occupied yet to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the see entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the lower case "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's initial
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years before nearby William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The assemblage's beginning CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original party to evolve and convinced a router, it
was identical of the pre-eminent to peddle commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Safe became thoroughly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from used to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went following (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq inventory exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to exhibit his reinforce in search 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 variety of companies to disgorge in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, throughout on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquirement made at hand Cisco to date, and simply the
acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ business units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Bring up as a remainder Internet Conduct (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Parade 2000, at the apex of the dot-com increase, Cisco router was the most
valuable friends in the the world at large, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify one of the most valuable companies.

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