Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern comp hard at Schlumberger, stirring occupied time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the see name,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the put down if it happens "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's earliest
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in front by William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The assemblage's beginning CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the placement 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 evolve and give away a router, it
was bromide of the oldest to sell commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Guide became everywhere
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily cast-off to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went public (with a stock exchange 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 show his shore up for her.
Bosack and his old lady walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a medley 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 industry when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, representing about US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made by Cisco to date, and only the
acquisition of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Bring up as a remainder Internet Usage (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com increase, Cisco firewall was the most
valuable friends in the existence, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk exceed of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify one of the most valuable companies.

The company was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "an eye to the exemplary property
of their relationships with employees and communities".