WEBVTT - The Origins of Cisco Systems 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.960 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.320 I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:20.160 with how Stuff Works and I love all things tech, 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:24.440 and today we are going to do a listener request 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:27.600 tech Stuff. Listener Gauge asked that I do uh an 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:31.400 episode or two about a big, big company in technology. 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:35.440 Once upon a time it was the biggest company in technology. 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:39.200 That would be Cisco, also known as Cisco Systems. This 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.919 is a company that many of you probably have heard about, uh, 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:45.360 but maybe you don't know too much about it. The 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.960 company's mission statement is pretty humble all things considered. It 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.599 is quote shape the future of the Internet by creating 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:59.080 unprecedented value and opportunity for our customers, employees, investors, and 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:03.320 ecosystem partners end quote. So, you know, just shaping the 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.600 future of the Internet. As it turns out, Cisco and 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:10.880 the Internet are deeply connected. The the company would not 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:15.800 exist without network computers. That's the whole core of what 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:19.760 the company was about, especially from a hardware perspective. Early on, 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:25.440 So Cisco Systems, particularly back when it was called Cisco Systems, 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:29.560 really made its fortune through creating the equipment that serves 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:34.040 as the infrastructure for various computer networks, including the network 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.800 of networks we call the Internet. It's mainly a business 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:41.959 to business corporation, meaning its customers tend to be other 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:45.280 big businesses. It did kind of dip its toe in 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:49.040 the consumer market, where it sold some products meant for 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:53.559 the average person such as myself, but it doesn't really 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:57.160 do that anymore. However, Today the company employs more than 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:01.160 seventy thousand people and it generates more than forty eight 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:05.160 billion dollars in revenue. But that's not how it all started. 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:10.519 Way back in and actually, Cisco Systems origin story is 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:15.760 one that has over time been somewhat oversimplified and romanticized. 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.880 This should come as no surprise to anyone who has 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.920 ever followed any companies in the tech sphere, really any 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.440 company at all. A lot of companies oversimplify their origins 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:30.680 because the truth of the matter tends to get pretty 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:35.639 complicated and sometimes it requires a whole lot of explanation. Now, 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:39.960 a lot of Silicon Valley companies have a similar mythic 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:44.400 origin story. Typically, you hear stories about how young engineers 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:49.040 turned into entrepreneurs. Sometimes they're fresh out of college. Sometimes 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:52.320 they drop out of school in order to pursue a 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.720 business opportunity, and they're almost always seems to be a 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:59.760 garage involved in some pivotal part of the early business history, 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.600 and after some vague amount of time, the company's profile 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:11.200 skyrockets and the entrepreneurs become gazillionaires. See also Microsoft, Apple, Google, 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:16.600 et cetera. Cisco Systems origin, or at least the version 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:20.120 of the origin story that tends to be told, is 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:24.480 not that far off from that particular archetype. However, instead 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:29.320 of students, the founders were employees of Stanford University. They 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:33.360 were computer scientists who are managing various computer departments at Stanford. 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.920 In fact, at the time they were a husband and 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:42.480 wife team. They headed up different computer labs essentially at Stanford, 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:45.640 and instead of a garage, they operated outside of their 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:48.720 or in their living room in San Jose, California. That's 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:53.119 where Cisco Systems got its start, was in their living room. 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:57.000 They named their company after the sister city of San Francisco, 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:00.520 so Cisco Systems. Also, if you look at the logo, 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:05.000 it's these the lines of vertical dashes. Uh, those vertical 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:09.720 dashes are an abstract of the Golden gate Bridge. Now, 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:13.840 the simplified story of the origin of Cisco Systems has 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:18.039 two protagonists. There's Sandy Lerner, she was in charge of 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:21.240 the computers for the Graduate School of Business at Stanford, 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:25.880 and there was her then husband that they've since gotten divorced, 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:31.200 Leonard Bozak, who oversaw the computers in the computer science department. 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:35.880 Now back, as the story goes, the two were frustrated 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:39.080 that despite working for the same university and having offices 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.440 five yards apart from each other, they could not send 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:47.040 emails to each other. Their respective accounts were on different 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:51.400 computer networks and there was no intercommunication channel between those 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:54.840 two networks. The Business school had its network, the computer 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:58.359 science division had its network, and the two were kind 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:03.040 of autonomous and step brit entities. Then, as the story goes, 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.520 the two decided to create a multi protocol router to 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.880 connect the two systems together and allow this couple to 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:13.000 communicate via email. And then they saw how useful their 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.239 technology was and decided that they should turn it into 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.800 a product, asking Stanford to do so. Stanford said that 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.040 they they the the university could not really do that. 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:26.159 So then they decided to launch their own company called Cisco, 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.640 and the rest is history. But again that's an oversimplification. 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:33.200 The reality is that a lot of different people were 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:36.919 working on a solution to this problem of facilitating communication 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:41.440 between disparate computer and networks. But before I detail that history, 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:43.560 I thought it might be helpful to talk about what 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:48.400 the heck a multi protocol router is, why are they necessary? 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.400 And that means that we need to define a few 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:56.800 different terms like land when, and explain the purposes of 0:05:56.839 --> 0:06:00.360 protocols in general and what a multi protocol technology does 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:05.000 in particular. So first of all, let's talk about lands. 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:08.400 So a land L a N is a local area network. 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.080 This is a computer network that covers a limited area. 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:14.880 It could be a single home. You could have a 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:16.760 local area network set up in your home, and you 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:18.880 may very well have this. If you have a router 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.520 connected to a modem in your home, then you have 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.560 a local area network. It could also be an office, 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:28.000 it could be an office building, it could be a 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:31.960 university campus. So the scale of a local area network 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.440 can get quite large, but it's still confined to a 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:40.400 geographic region. So let's say your office has a local 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:43.719 area network and your office purchased all the equipment to 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:48.600 run and maintain this network. So while some other companies 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:53.680 made the actual uh the components of the infrastructure, the 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.080 infrastructure is owned by your company because they bought those 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:00.560 products and then installed them. So there's no connect ativity 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:03.479 to any other network, So you don't have a channel 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.760 out to the Internet. This is all self contained. Anyone 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:10.440 who connects to that network and they have privileges on 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:13.560 that network, they have the ability to communicate with others 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:16.760 on that same network, or they can store and retrieve 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:19.880 files on the network whatever system has been set up. 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.440 But that's the extent of the reach on that local 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.080 area network. And these technologies really begin to emerge in 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:32.800 the early nineteen seventies, particularly with the invention of Ethernet 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.520 out of Xerox Park. I'll talk a little bit more 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.880 about that in a in a second. A WHEN or 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:42.640 w a N is a wide area network. These networks 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:46.040 cover larger geographic regions and also tend to rely upon 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:51.800 telecommunications circuits that are owned by some other entity. So 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:58.040 there's some company that owns the actual infrastructure that a 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:02.760 wide area network is relying upon. Typically it doesn't have 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:06.000 to be that case, but that's typically what happens. So 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:08.200 that means there has to be some sort of agreement 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:13.320 between the administrators of the wide area network and the 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:17.160 companies that actually own the infrastructure, the actual fiber and 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:21.080 the switches that the network relies upon. A wide area 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:25.720 network might connect numerous local area networks together, which allows 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:29.400 for a channel of communication between those local area networks. 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.760 But that's easier said than done because back in the 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:36.440 early early days when everyone was trying to start creating 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:39.320 local area networks, there were a lot of different companies 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.760 that were developing their own proprietary approaches to creating these 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.959 local area networks, with their own proprietary hardware and software 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:51.920 and their own protocols. So if you like analogies, like 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:54.679 I do because it was an English lit major, just 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.920 imagine again that you are in a big office building, 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:02.959 and each floor of that office building has an office 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:06.880 where people speak a single language and only that language. 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:10.920 And let's say that the first floor is all French speakers, 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:13.920 the second floor is all German speakers, the third floor 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.679 is all Finnish speakers, the fourth is Swahili, and the 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:20.960 fifth is English. People within a single office have no 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:23.800 problem communicating with each other. Right, if you're one of 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:26.600 the people who speaks English and you're on the fifth floor, 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:28.760 you can speak to everyone else on the fifth floor. 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.640 They can understand you, you can understand them, because you're 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:36.200 all communicating within that same language. However, communication between offices 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:39.960 is much more challenging because the inhabitants of those different 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:44.559 offices speak different languages and they do not speak other ones. 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:48.480 This is where protocols come in. So a communications protocol 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:53.120 is similar to a language, but a communications protocol is 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:56.120 really a set of rules that computer systems have to 0:09:56.200 --> 0:10:00.040 follow in order to send and receive data right to 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.720 send data to other computers and received data from other 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:07.199 computers or other devices that are connected to the network. 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.240 It's not just computer systems. It could be things like 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.440 handheld devices, or it could be printers, could be lots 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:17.719 of different stuff. These protocols dictate the form or syntax 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:20.400 that the data has to take in order for it 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.920 to transmit across this network, and there are also rules 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:26.880 that govern what to do in case and error occurs. 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.360 How do you recover data in that in that instance, 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.600 or how do you synchronize data between different components on 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:36.240 the network. And these protocols often will depend both upon 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:40.760 hardware and software, and because you have different companies creating 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.760 these different local area networks, it could mean you have 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:48.120 different incompatible protocols that are making up all these rules. So, 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:51.120 again going back to that office building analogy, think of 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.680 each office floor not as having people who speak different 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:58.240 languages on every floor, but different computer networks that are 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:03.840 working on a different prietary protocol in each floor. That 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:08.079 means that computer systems on a single floor can communicate 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:10.720 with each other easily because they're following the same set 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:15.560 of rules, but computer systems on different floors can't communicate 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.720 easily they are each following a different set of rules, 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:23.800 so you have this disconnect. This is where the concept 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:27.920 of multi protocol infrastructure comes in. In the case of Cisco, 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.480 it was a multi protocol router. Now, a router is 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.440 a device that sits between networks. It's kind of a 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:39.160 connecting point. Sometimes we call them gateways, although for a 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:43.120 while there was a differentiation between router and gateway. Today 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:46.080 they are largely one and the same. But these are 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:50.600 connecting points between one network and another network. It could 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:53.000 be two local area networks, so you could have a 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:57.400 router between those two. It could be a router between 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:00.000 a local area network and a wide area network, include 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.480 being a local area network and the Internet. So your 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:07.080 typical home router sits between a residential networks such as 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:09.960 one that covers one household. Let's say that it's your 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.640 personal router, and it sits between that and the Internet 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.120 at large. Routers direct traffic on the Internet, so when 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:19.640 data flies across the Internet, it does so in packets. 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:22.160 I've talked about data packets many many times. I won't 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:25.000 go into it here, but packets can hop from one 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:28.080 router to another until they arrive at their intended destination. 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:30.920 At different packets from the same file can travel very 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:35.160 different pathways to get to that destination. Multi protocol routers, 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:37.960 as the name suggests, are able to communicate through more 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:41.839 than one set of rules, so they're kind of like interpreters, right. 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:44.760 They can kind of interpret in one language and translate 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:48.120 it into another language, So they can accept data following 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.640 one set of protocols and send it in a different 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:54.959 set acceptable to the recipient and vice versa. So if 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:57.559 you have two local area networks and a multi protocol 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:01.120 router in between the two, it can accept data from 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.280 network number one and then translate it into a form 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:09.000 that network number two can facilitate. So it's an important 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:13.240 component if you want to have communication between networks. So 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:17.120 now we recognize that computer networks communicate through various protocols, 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.760 and that those protocols can be different from one another, 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:24.040 especially in the early days of networks, and that necessitates 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:27.760 some sort of component between the networks to facilitate communication. 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:31.839 But back in this wasn't something you could just pick 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:34.800 up off the shelf yet, at least not until Cisco 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:37.120 came into being. People had to suss out how it 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.320 would work. So the story of Cisco's origins are tied 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:43.719 together with that process. When we come back, we'll look 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:46.520 at the people and events that led to Cisco becoming 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:50.480 a company. But first let's take a quick break to 0:13:50.600 --> 0:14:01.760 thank our sponsor. Before Cisco was launched in nineteen eighty four, 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:04.280 a few years of work went into the development of 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:07.200 the technology that would give the company it's real start, 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:11.200 and while Lerner and Bozak were involved, so were a 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:15.280 lot of other people. First, Stanford's connection to the Internet, 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:19.240 both figuratively and literally, stretches back to before there was 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:23.840 an internet, way back in nineteen sixty nine, Stanford was 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:28.760 the site of one of the four original Interface Message processors. 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:31.800 Those were special mini computers that were part of the 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:35.520 experimental ARPA Net. That was the computer network that would 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.640 serve as a stepping stone toward the development of the Internet. 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:40.960 A lot of the protocols that would be used on 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:44.600 the Internet were developed for the Arpanet first. The other 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.880 three imps. By the way, those are the the interface 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:51.760 message processors. The other three were at the University of California, 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:55.440 Los Angeles, the University of California Santa Barbara, and the 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:59.600 University of Utah. Back around late nineteen eighty or early 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:04.000 nineteen eighty one, Stanford received some Alto workstations from the 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:09.000 Xerox Palo Alto Research Center better known as Xerox Park. 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:12.680 If you listen to my episodes about Xerox, you might 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:15.760 remember the Alto. It was the computer system that would 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:19.360 inspire Steve Jobs to return to Apple and push for 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:23.160 the Macintosh and the Lisa systems to incorporate a graphic 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.200 user interface or gooey. It was bigger than a computer 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:29.920 desktop would be these days, but smaller than a lot 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.440 of other mini computer systems. Xerox only reduced a couple 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.560 of thousand of these machines. Mostly they used them internally 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:40.200 at Xerox, but they did distribute around five hundred of 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:44.400 them to various universities and research facilities, including Stanford and 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.520 The Alto was pretty cool, especially since Xerox first started 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.480 producing them in the early nineteen seventies, more than a 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:54.440 decade before we would see gooey based computers in the 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:58.160 consumer marketplace, stuff like the Macintosh and then later still 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:03.040 the Microsoft Windows operating system. But the technology that really 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:07.560 got computer scientists excited that was incorporated into the Alto 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:11.880 was ethernet. I mentioned it earlier while Bob Metcalf over 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:16.360 at Xerox, pioneered ethernet development in nineteen seventy three. Over 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:19.040 at Park he was working on a way to connect 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:23.080 auto computers to printers initially, and he developed a networking 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:25.960 platform and cabling system in order to do so. See, 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:30.160 printers were really, really expensive, so it didn't make a 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:32.200 whole lot of sense to get a printer for every 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:35.080 single computer system. It made more sense to set up 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:38.680 a system where multiple computers could share the printer as 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:41.560 an asset. After all, you're not sending jobs to the 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:45.440 printer all the time, so most of the time the 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:47.680 printer would just sit idle, which mean it wasn't a 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:51.720 very efficient use of technology. By allowing multiple computers to 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:55.400 share the single printer and meant that you have you 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:58.560 have boosted the efficiency of the printer. It's in operation 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:02.400 more frequently and it's not just sitting there. So it 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.960 was an interesting approach to this problem, not just connecting 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.040 a computer to a printer, but a way of making 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:14.040 a printer a more effective asset for the team at large. 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:17.359 So he developed the networking platform and the cabling system 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:19.760 in order to do this, and he designed the standards 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:23.879 that would guide communication across the cable. The Ethernet standard 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:26.440 either NEET made it easier to create a system in 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:29.960 which computers and other devices like printers could communicate with 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:34.200 each other. But how would you connect disparate networks, particularly 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:38.280 ones that relied on other protocols besides the Ethernet standard. 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:41.720 The director of Computer Facilities at Stanford at the time, 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:46.080 Ralph Goren, made a general request. He said, I kind 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:49.560 of want some form of technology that could serve as 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:53.639 something like a network extension cord to create networks between 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:56.640 computers that are more distant from one another. So while 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:00.960 we're pretty good at linking computers that are fairly close 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:03.679 to each other, I went a way to extend that 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:07.399 to beyond just the computers that are all within the 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:10.760 same room or same building. A group of Stanford computer 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:15.280 scientists tackled this problem, actually pretty big group, and there 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.199 were some that were contributing hardware. There were some who 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:21.399 were creating software for this, and they were all working 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:24.240 to try and make a thing possible. One of those 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:28.399 people was Andy Bechtelsheim, who would later go on to 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:33.840 found a little company called Sun micro Systems, and he 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:37.760 developed the computer board that would sit inside this router. 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:42.480 William Yeager, who was a research engineer, wrote the software 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:46.120 for the multi protocol router. He had previously found success 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.680 in networking machines between the medical center computers and the 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:53.359 computer science department, so this was sort of taking that 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:57.359 approach and then making it more flexible to allow for 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.000 even more types of local area works to communicate with 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:04.600 one another. Now. I didn't find a full list of 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:07.679 all the people who contributed to working on this multi 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.000 protocol router. I suspect more than a dozen people made 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:14.480 some sort of contribution throughout the whole process, because this 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:16.919 was not something that was, you know, a couple of 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.040 weeks in the works. This was a project that lasted 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:22.600 quite some time as people began to develop hardware and 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.920 software for it, tested out, tweak it, make changes, make 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.960 another addition, and it was definitely a collaborative effort. The 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:34.120 result was what the computer scientists called the blue box. 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:37.359 The blue box, it's because the device was inside a 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:40.679 blue case. Goren would later say that while he asked 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:43.480 for an extension cord, what he actually got was more 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.600 like a power outlet strip. It was much more versatile 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:49.679 than a simple long distance connection between two different lands. 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.600 It was a device that could allow for communication across 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:58.040 lots of different networks and Yeager software, while being fairly unsophisticated. 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.760 According to one Stay and Ford employee who would later 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:06.119 go on to work for Cisco, it was incredibly adaptable, 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:11.639 so maybe not terribly you know, seamless or sophisticated, but 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:15.880 easy to tweak so that you could incorporate different protocols. 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:21.280 Bozak and a learner founded Cisco Systems in December four 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:24.160 with the intent to market these routers for the burgeoning 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.560 network industry, as well as networking cards for computers. They 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:32.439 didn't get started right away. Stanford officials decided in nineteen 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:36.880 to undertake a comprehensive networking project to connect the various 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:40.520 networks across campus together, and as part of that initiative, 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:43.800 the officials wanted the project to rely solely upon the 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:47.119 Internet Protocol as a communications protocol. So, in other words, 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:52.159 simplify matters by settling on one standard for protocols and 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:56.080 not allow anything else. This is it turns out, is foreshadowing, 0:20:56.160 --> 0:21:00.000 but we'll get to that later. Bozak and an engineer 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.080 named Kirk low Feed approached Yeager and asked him for 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.440 his software. They said, can we get your software for 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:10.560 multi protocol routers and they planned on modifying that for 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:16.160 the new Stanford project whether solely Internet protocol as the 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:19.800 communications protocol in question. So Yeager agreed, He handed over 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:23.359 his software, and Bozak and lo Feed made changes to 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:25.640 that software. They stripped it of its ability to route 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.000 other communication protocols because that was not part of the 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:32.160 Stanford project, and they enhanced the Internet capabilities of the device, 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:34.960 And in other words, they did make substantive changes to 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:38.400 the technology as part of the Stanford project. But apparently, 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.960 according to Yeager, they did not reveal that they had 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:45.160 also gone through the process of incorporating a new company 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:48.960 and that Bozak had an outstanding request to Stanford to 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:52.080 allow this new company to sell a version of this 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:56.920 blue box router. Stanford is a non profit university, and 0:21:56.960 --> 0:22:00.000 as such they could not legally enter into the manufact 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:04.960 during business, but the router had undeniable utility. However, the 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:08.040 university did not see eye to eye with Bozak and Learner, 0:22:08.080 --> 0:22:11.760 and they said no way san Jose. But that didn't 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:15.240 stop Bozak and Learner from building routers and network cards 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:17.920 out of their home in San Jose and selling them 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:22.880 by late night or by some accounts, early What's more, 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.040 other members of the staff of Stanford got all head 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:29.679 up because of the couple and some of the stuff 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:32.639 they were doing. First, it seemed pretty clear that at 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:36.560 least some of the development for Cisco's router product happened 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:40.359 on Stanford's time when Bozak and law Feed and Learner 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:43.480 were supposed to be working for the university. The Learner, 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:46.760 by the way, would leave Stanford first before anyone else 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:50.520 would second, and more to the point the Cisco router 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:54.119 appeared to contain work that came from other members of 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:59.040 Stanford's computer science community, as did the network cards. Nick Vezad, 0:22:59.440 --> 0:23:01.840 who worked with Yeager, claimed that there was no real 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:05.280 difference between the router Cisco sold and the ones that 0:23:05.359 --> 0:23:09.480 Stanford was using on their own systems, and that there 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:13.680 might have been some theft if you're if you're being 0:23:13.800 --> 0:23:17.400 really you know, stickler for it. There were those who 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:22.080 essentially were accusing Bozak and Learner of stealing intellectual property 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:25.280 that belonged to other people without compensating them for it. 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:29.399 Bozak and Learner said that they had taken the technologies 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:32.960 and they had made substantial changes to them, and also 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:37.840 Stanford was not going to sell them. Stanford wasn't going 0:23:37.840 --> 0:23:40.040 to get into the manufacturing business. It couldn't as a 0:23:40.040 --> 0:23:45.600 nonprofit utility or university, I should say, so they did 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:47.680 what they had to do in order to actually make 0:23:47.680 --> 0:23:51.000 it a working product. Meanwhile, Bozak was still working for 0:23:51.040 --> 0:23:54.760 Stanford at that time. By early he was given the 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:58.280 choice to either work for Stanford or just work for Cisco, 0:23:58.440 --> 0:24:00.399 but he could not do both of the same time, 0:24:01.200 --> 0:24:04.240 and he was also accused of operating Cisco during his 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:07.320 hours of working at Stanford, and therefore Cisco's routers were 0:24:07.359 --> 0:24:11.840 being made at the university's expense. So this was a 0:24:11.840 --> 0:24:16.879 pretty tough accusation, and on July eleven, Len Bozak and 0:24:16.960 --> 0:24:20.320 Kirklawfeed both resigned from Stanford. Learner, as I had said, 0:24:20.480 --> 0:24:23.800 had already left the university at that point. Cisco also 0:24:23.920 --> 0:24:28.439 hired on two other Stanford employees, Greg Satz, who joined 0:24:28.520 --> 0:24:33.360 Cisco as a programmer, and Richard Troyano, who would oversee sales. 0:24:33.640 --> 0:24:39.600 So this group of former Stanford employees start Cisco Systems. Now. Eventually, 0:24:39.640 --> 0:24:42.560 Stanford and Cisco would come to a settlement agreement to 0:24:42.600 --> 0:24:46.960 resolve the problem that Stanford technology was incorporated into Cisco's router. 0:24:47.480 --> 0:24:50.600 The university chose the settlement as the best option out 0:24:50.600 --> 0:24:54.199 of a bunch of not totally awesome choices. So the 0:24:54.240 --> 0:24:56.919 other choices they essentially had was they could pursue a 0:24:56.960 --> 0:25:00.399 court case, which ultimately might have stopped sis sco, but 0:25:00.440 --> 0:25:03.679 it wouldn't accomplish much else, or or they could have 0:25:03.720 --> 0:25:06.240