Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct java services at Schlumberger, exciting full yet to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the burg high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the lower lawsuit "cisco" in the antiquated days. For Cisco's initial
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years earlier on William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Tab
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 original convention to develop and sell a router, it
was a given of the oldest to sell commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Documents became greatly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily reach-me-down to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went projected (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 news, Bosack resigned to conduct his reinforce for 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 disgorge in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. A number of 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 company located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless possessions made by Cisco to latest, and only the
purchase of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Bring up to the ground Internet Conduct (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent March 2000, at the crest of the dot-com boom, Cisco vendor was the most
valuable company in the crowd, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange exceed of about US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify one of the most valuable companies.

The company was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "in search the superior blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".