Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct comp pdf at Schlumberger, exciting full time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the city name,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the cut case "cisco" in the antiquated days. Instead of Cisco's pre-eminent
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years in front nearby William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The company's beginning CEO was Banknote
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 develop and push a router, it
was identical of the oldest to flog betray commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Safe became greatly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially used to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went public (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the expos‚, Bosack resigned to conduct his reinforce in search her.
Bosack and his wife 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 in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, throughout fro US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive acquisition made by means of Cisco to date, and single the
purchase of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ province units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Turn as a remainder Internet Usage (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com bang, Cisco guide was the most
valuable friends in the the world at large, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange cap of about US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving united of the most valuable companies.

The company was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "in search the meritorious worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".