Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined before
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern java software at Schlumberger, exciting occupied time to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the municipality entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the put down case "cisco" in the near the start days. Instead of Cisco's first
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in front by William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The assemblage's earliest CEO was Banknote
Graves, who held the site from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by way of John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original convention to expose and sell a router, it
was one of the oldest to retail commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Books became widely
adopted, the note of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from acclimatized to yield 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 express 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 selection of companies to bring in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet boom in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market possessions made nearby Cisco to antiquated, and simply the
obtaining of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ province units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Turn to the ground Internet Conduct (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In dilatory March 2000, at the apex of the dot-com prosper, Cisco ios was the most
valuable gathering in the the world at large, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a market exceed of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify whole of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "in search the outstanding property
of their relationships with employees and communities".