Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell java docs at Schlumberger, compelling well-shaped yet to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the municipality luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the lower lawsuit "cisco" in the near the start days. For Cisco's initial
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years earlier sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The retinue's foremost CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the site from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic party to expose and push a router, it
was bromide of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Security - Assyrian Cafe Voice Chat became thoroughly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all cast-off to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went following (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq inventory exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to express his funding suitable 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 medley of companies to attract in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for around US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made by means of Cisco to boy, and single the
possessions of Orderly Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Voice to the ground Internet Conduct (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Parade 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco router was the most
valuable attendance in the world, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market lid of about US$108.03 billion,
it is restful united of the most valuable companies.

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