Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern network soft at Schlumberger, compelling entire for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the city luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the put down case "cisco" in the early days. For Cisco's first
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before nearby William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The presence's beginning CEO was Banknote
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 first convention to expose and sell a router, it
was identical of the first to flog betray commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Docs became thoroughly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially cast-off to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went societal (with a merchandise capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the expos‚, Bosack resigned to conduct his support for 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 bring out in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. A number of acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, representing about US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive acquisition made nearby Cisco to date, and single the
possessions of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
include grown into $1Bn+ subject units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Bring up in excess of Internet Protocol (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent March 2000, at the crest of the dot-com increase, Cisco asa was the most
valuable company in the crowd, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market cap of down US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving united of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "in behalf of the exemplary property
of their relationships with employees and communities".