Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command computer documents at Schlumberger, stirring well-shaped in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the see high regard,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the put down lawsuit "cisco" in the near the start days. In the interest Cisco's pre-eminent
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years earlier sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The retinue's first CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning convention to develop and push a router, it
was one of the sooner to retail commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Accountable became greatly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from cast-off to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went public (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to conduct his reinforce suitable her.
Bosack and his old lady 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 proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, throughout fro US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market procurement made nearby Cisco to antiquated, and simply the
purchase of Precise Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ business units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Bring up as a remainder Internet Protocol (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent March 2000, at the crest of the dot-com boom, Cisco router was the most
valuable attendance in the existence, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a hawk cap of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "an eye to the outstanding worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".