40 Years of Cisco, the Real Story Behind Cisco's "Innovative" Founding
Cisco's 40th anniversary highlights its origins in leveraging Stanford's technology, legal disputes, a successful partner program, and navigating regulatory challenges, contributing to its $250 billion valuation and industry influence.
Cisco celebrates its 40th birthday, prompting a reflection on its origins that diverges from the popular narrative. While the story often credits founders Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner with inventing the multiprotocol router, the reality is that a team of Stanford engineers, led by Bill Yeager, had already developed the technology. Bosack and Lerner capitalized on this existing work while still employed at Stanford, leading to legal disputes over intellectual property. Ultimately, Stanford settled for a relatively small sum, which has since contributed to Cisco's massive valuation exceeding $250 billion. Cisco's true innovation lies not only in its technology but also in establishing a successful partner program, which has been pivotal in its growth. The company has faced challenges, including maintaining a competitive edge while navigating regulatory scrutiny. As Cisco looks to the future, it continues to influence the networking landscape significantly.
- Cisco's origins involve leveraging existing Stanford technology rather than a purely original invention.
- The company settled a legal dispute with Stanford for $463,000 in today's money.
- Cisco's partner program has been a key factor in its success and market dominance.
- The company has a history of navigating regulatory challenges while maintaining its competitive position.
- Cisco's growth has transformed it into a $250 billion enterprise, reflecting its significant impact on the tech industry.
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6 commentsGood topic for a business school case study.
https://engineering.stanford.edu/about/visit/inside-engineer...
In 1981, inspired by Ethernet and the fledgling Internet, alumni Judy Estrin and Eric Benhamou and two other entrepreneurs co-founded Bridge Communications to make servers and routers to move data within and between networks. In 1984, alumnus Leonard Bosack and his, wife Sandy Lerner, left computer operations staff jobs at Stanford to found an Internet router company called Cisco, which has become the dominant company in the industry. They adapted the multi-protocol router software developed some years earlier at Stanford by William Yeager.
* Interview with Bill Yeager https://www.networkworld.com/article/847852/lan-wan-router-m... (of note: gives credit for the early hardware architecture used through the Cisco AGS+ to Andy Bechtolsheim)
* Tom Rindfleisch at Stanford, very similar to Yeager's story https://web.stanford.edu/~tcr/tcr-cisco.html
* Slightly more favorable to the Cisco founders https://historyofcomputercommunications.info/section/14.21/c...
It was the single most noisy cooling fan unit in the machineroom. It literally screamed. We could hear it over two vax, and a pyramid. It also blew air the least performant direction, for rack cooling.
Jokes aside it was a very cool device, but the jokes about engineering pre release quality were large.
This may be the unit in the science museum London.
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