Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command java software at Schlumberger, moving well-shaped yet to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the city entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the cut case "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's first
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in front by William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The presence's beginning CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the stance from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by way of John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic party to bring out and give away a router, it
was bromide of the oldest to peddle commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Suite became thoroughly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from cast-off to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went public (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 exhibit his support suitable 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 ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made at hand Cisco to date, and at best the
purchase of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ business units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Utter in excess of Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Walk 2000, at the apex of the dot-com prosper, Cisco doc was the most
valuable friends in the world, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

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