Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell linux hardware at Schlumberger, exciting well-shaped in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the see entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the discredit instance "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's first
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years before on William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The company's earliest CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the placement 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 beginning followers to expose and sell a router, it
was bromide of the pre-eminent to retail commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Safe became thoroughly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all reach-me-down to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went societal (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to express 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 attract in products and ingenuity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, representing about US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market acquirement made by Cisco to boy, and single the
acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ subject units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Turn as a remainder Internet Protocol (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Parade 2000, at the crest of the dot-com bang, Cisco doc was the most
valuable friends in the the world at large, 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 pacify individual of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "for the outstanding blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".