Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern network services at Schlumberger, moving entire in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the burg name,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the discredit lawsuit "cisco" in the near the start days. For Cisco's initial
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in the vanguard on William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The assemblage's foremost CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the site 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 original followers to evolve and push a router, it
was a given of the sooner to peddle commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Suite became thoroughly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all acclimatized to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went societal (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the expos‚, Bosack resigned to conduct his support suitable 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 variety of companies to attract in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, in the course of around US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made by means of Cisco to date, and only the
possessions of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ province units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Utter as a remainder Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Walk 2000, at the height of the dot-com increase, Cisco firewall was the most
valuable attendance in the existence, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk exceed of about US$108.03 billion,
it is restful whole of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "an eye to the superior blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".