Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct it soft at Schlumberger, stirring occupied for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the burg name,
San Francisco, which is why the circle's engineers insisted on
using the discredit if it happens "cisco" in the early days. As a service to Cisco's earliest
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before nearby William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first company to bring out and give away a router, it
was identical of the sooner to retail commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Safe became thoroughly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially reach-me-down to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage 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 funding 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 out in products and talent into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the work when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, for fro US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market possessions made nearby Cisco to latest, and only the
acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. A number of acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ province units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Utter in excess of Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory March 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com boom, Cisco manual was the most
valuable gathering in the crowd, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cover humbly of down US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify one of the most valuable companies.

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