Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke 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 network hard at Schlumberger, stirring entire yet to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the city name,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the lower if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. For Cisco's earliest
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years before sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The company's beginning CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the stance from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic followers to bring out and sell a router, it
was identical of the oldest to retail commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Guide became thoroughly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from acclimatized to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went following (with a superstore 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 show 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 medley of companies to bring in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company 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 company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive procurement made nearby Cisco to latest, and single the
purchase of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Voice to the ground Internet Conduct (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Parade 2000, at the height of the dot-com increase, Cisco doc was the most
valuable company in the existence, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cap of about US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving united of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "for the superior quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".