Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern java hardware at Schlumberger, exciting occupied for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the see entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the prehistoric days. In the interest Cisco's earliest
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years in front on William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first company to develop and convinced a router, it
was a given of the sooner to peddle commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Safe became greatly
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily acclimatized to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue 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 newscast, Bosack resigned to conduct his shore up for her.
Bosack and his the missis walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a variety of companies to disgorge in products and ingenuity 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 performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for fro US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquirement made by Cisco to latest, and single the
possessions of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Bring up over Internet Conduct (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Cortege 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com prosper, Cisco firewall was the most
valuable gathering in the world, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is restful one of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "for the exemplary blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".