Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern network pdf at Schlumberger, exciting full time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the city entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the lower lawsuit "cisco" in the antiquated days. As a service to Cisco's pre-eminent
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years in front on William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The assemblage's foremost CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning company to bring out and give away a router, it
was bromide of the oldest to flog betray commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Documents became everywhere
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all acclimatized to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went projected (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 announcement, Bosack resigned to conduct his support for 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 medley of companies to disgorge in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, throughout fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced procurement made at hand Cisco to date, and only the
purchase of Precise Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ subject units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Utter over Internet Protocol (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable March 2000, at the crest of the dot-com prosper, Cisco router was the most
valuable attendance in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange lid of down US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify one of the most valuable companies.

The company was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "in behalf of the outstanding quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".