Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern linux software at Schlumberger, compelling well-shaped yet to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the see name,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit lawsuit "cisco" in the antiquated days. For Cisco's initial
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years before sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The assemblage's beginning CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the site 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 bromide of the pre-eminent to peddle commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Documents became everywhere
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially used to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went following (with a market 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 express his shore up in compensation 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 genus of companies to attract in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, representing fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced procurement made nearby Cisco to latest, and simply the
possessions of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ province units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Bring up in excess of Internet Protocol (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Walk 2000, at the apex of the dot-com boom, Cisco asa was the most
valuable gathering in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk cap of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is still united of the most valuable companies.

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