Leonard Bosack

Leonard Bosack is, with his ex-wife Sandra Lerner, co-founder of Cisco Systems.

Bosack attended La Salle College High School in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1969. He then entered the The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1973. After graduation, he worked at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), where he was involved in projects relating to 36-bit systems. In 1979, Bosack left DEC for Stanford University, where he obtained a master’s degree in computer science in 1981. There, he met and married graduate student Sandra Lerner in 1980.

Cisco Systems founders Len Bosack and his then-wife, Sandra Lerner, are credited with making major design enhancements to one of the technologies that makes the Internet possible—the router. Bosack, Lerner, and the Stanford colleagues who helped them didn’t invent the first router. That credit goes to William Yeager, a Stanford Medical School engineer, who wrote the software to drive a specialized computer controlled by an Internetwork Operating System (IOS). Bosack and his group took the original router code, enhanced the design, and capitalized on it, creating the first commercially successful router.

According to Cisco's company legend, Bosack, who managed the computer science department’s computers, and Lerner, who managed the computer system for the Graduate School of Business, worked at opposite ends of Stanford University campus. They could send e-mail messages back and forth using the campus Local Area Network (LAN), but their two computers, which ran on different operating systems, could not communicate directly. Using an updated version of an IMP (with a networking board designed by future Sun Microsystems founder Andy Bechtolsheim), Bosack, Lerner, and two Stanford staff members ran network cables between the buildings and connected them.

In fact, both systems (SU-SCORE and SU-GSB) were TOPS-20 systems. The problem was not that the systems were incompatible (obviously, being the same, they weren't) but that the SU-GSB system was originally not on any network.

During the networking process, Bosack and Lerner’s team improved the connectivity of the original device so that it worked better with unrelated networks, computer systems, and protocols. Pretty soon, word got out, and other universities began asking for these new, improved devices, which were called multiprotocol routers. Bosack and Lerner realized the commercial potential of the new development and went to Stanford to propose selling the routers commercially. Because Stanford is a nonprofit organization, it could not enter into a commercial venture, and therefore it declined and forbade the group from selling the technology.

Others have disputed this version of the story. The San Jose "Mercury News" revealed the history of the Cisco's contentious birth in an article published on January 12, 2001 ( [http://pdp10.nocrew.org/docs/cisco.html "A start-up's true tale"] ). William Yeager also told a different side of the story [http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2006/anniversary/032706-routerman.html?t5] in an interview in 2006.

Stanford has also disputed the value of Bosack’s enhancements. It later claimed Bosack and others had usurped its design and improperly profitted from the routers. Rather than litigate, in April 1987, Stanford licensed the router software and two computer boards to Cisco in exchange for $19,300 in cash, $150,000 in royalties, product discounts, and support and the right to use other Cisco product improvements made after Bosack left Stanford.

By the end of 1984, Bosack and Lerner had formed Cisco Systems and begun manufacturing routers in their living room. Cisco was named after the city San Francisco. In 1986, Bosack resigned from Stanford amid allegations of impropriety to work at Cisco full time. That year, Bosack and Lerner received funding of $2.5 million from Sequoia Capital after 77 unsuccessful proposals to other venture capitalists.

Between 1984 and 1992, Cisco grew an average rate of 200% per year with little or no advertising. On August 28, 1990, the management team fired Lerner; upon hearing the news, Bosack resigned to show his support. The two immediately sold their shares in Cisco for an estimated $170 million. The following year, Bosack founded his own company [http://www.xkl.com/ XKL] , in Redmond, Washington, where he works today. He has ties to SETI, an organization devoted to the "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence".

External links

* [http://corporate.stanford.edu/philanthropy/professor.html Bosack/Lerner Endowed Professorship from Cisco Systems, Inc. ]