Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married several who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command linux hard at Schlumberger, compelling occupied for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the municipality name,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the lower case "cisco" in the early days. For Cisco's earliest
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years before nearby William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the stance from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning company to expose and sell a router, it
was identical of the first to flog betray commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Safe became thoroughly
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all acclimatized to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went societal (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq inventory exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to express his shore up suitable 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 selection of companies to bring in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, representing fro US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced possessions made at hand Cisco to date, and at best the
purchase of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ business units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Utter to the ground Internet Etiquette (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory March 2000, at the height of the dot-com increase, Cisco router was the most
valuable friends in the world, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market exceed of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is still individual of the most valuable companies.

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