Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell network hardware at Schlumberger, stirring full time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the municipality luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the cut if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. As a service to Cisco's pre-eminent
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years earlier sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The presence's beginning CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the position 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 one of the pre-eminent to peddle commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Suite became thoroughly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially reach-me-down to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went projected (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to conduct his reinforce in compensation 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 genus of companies to bring out 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 effort when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, representing fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquisition made by Cisco to antiquated, and simply the
purchase of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ province units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Voice in excess of Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Parade 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com prosper, Cisco pdf was the most
valuable friends in the the world at large, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend lid of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is still one of the most valuable companies.

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