Since 1986, Cisco has been one of the largest sellers of networking equipment in the world. On January 2, 2002 Cisco Systems became arguably the most valuable company in the world. Their first, and one of their most important product lines is their lineup of computer network routers. Cisco's router product line started with their AGS. The AGS hardware was a clone of the Stanford University blue box router, which was a commodity Sun Microsystems computer, and the AGS software was also a clone of William Yeager's routing software, in use, and owned by Stanford at the time. Cisco licensed the hardware and software and started selling the AGS. Cisco has a history of aggressive acquisition of other companies, bringing their networking products into the cisco lineup, and it also has a history of expansion. Cisco's router lineup has expanded over the years to fill almost every space. With Cisco's acquisition of Linksys, Cisco routers took a hold of the home, and home office router market. Cisco arguably started out targeting the wider corporate world with routers targeted at central offices as well as branch offices, and Cisco slowly expanded into the competitive telecommunications and internet service provider markets. Cisco product lineups grew to include access routers, routers used by ISPs to connect to their customers, as well as core internet routers used by telecommunication giants as the central pillars of the internet. Cisco has also moved into the cellular routing with their USC offerings. Cisco has even targeted the space-borne communications market putting its routers into orbit.
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