Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern java soft at Schlumberger, compelling entire in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the burg high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the near the start days. For Cisco's first
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before by William Yeager, another Stanford hand
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The company's first CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the site 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 first party to expose and push a router, it
was a given of the pre-eminent to retail commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Security - Assyrian Cafe Voice Chat became everywhere
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all acclimatized to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went public (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to exhibit his funding 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 genus of companies to attract in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the friends acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, in the course of fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced acquirement made at hand Cisco to date, and simply the
purchase of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ subject units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Utter over Internet Usage (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable March 2000, at the crest of the dot-com increase, Cisco router was the most
valuable friends in the crowd, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange lid of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify whole of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "an eye to the superior worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".