Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command linux hardware at Schlumberger, moving entire in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the city luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the cut lawsuit "cisco" in the early days. For Cisco's initial
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years in front by William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The presence's foremost CEO was Tabulation
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 first followers to expose and push a router, it
was identical of the sooner to peddle commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Security became thoroughly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily reach-me-down to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went projected (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to express his support in search 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 selection of companies to attract in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, in the course of on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquisition made by means of Cisco to latest, and single the
purchase of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Utter over Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Walk 2000, at the crest of the dot-com boom, Cisco firewall was the most
valuable attendance in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend exceed of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is still whole of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "for the outstanding worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".