Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct comp services at Schlumberger, compelling occupied yet to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the city luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the cut case "cisco" in the early days. As a service to Cisco's initial
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years before nearby William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The retinue's first CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the site from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic company to evolve and push a router, it
was a given of the oldest to sell commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Documents became widely
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from reach-me-down to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went societal (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to show his funding in search 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 work when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, in the course of fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquirement made by Cisco to antiquated, and only the
purchase of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ province units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Utter in excess of Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Parade 2000, at the apex of the dot-com boom, Cisco ios was the most
valuable friends in the crowd, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cover humbly of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

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