Approaching the 2Oth birthday of Cisco, the world's largest maker of networking equipment, and his own tenth anniversary as chief executive, John Chambers has lately been telling people, in his soft West Virginian drawl, that he is "having fun again". On November 9th, to prove it, he announced a good start to Cisco's 2005 financial year, with revenue up by 17% over the first quarter of fiscal 2004, and profits up by 29%. But those who have watched him over the years know that if Mr Chambers (aged 54) is upbeat today, it is in that gratefully relieved way of somebody in middle age who finds that he can still get his numbers up at all. Just recall Mr Chambers during the first half of his tenure, which coincided perfectly with the internet boom at its most youthfully optimistic. As the internet's preferred plumber-Cisco makes the switches and routers that steer all those packets of digital information through and between networks-Mr Chambers became its hero. In 2000, Cisco was even, briefly, the most valuable company in the world, and Mr Chambers was predicting revenues of $50 billion by 2004. Instead, actual revenues in 2004 were $22 billion, and Cisco's shares are today at around one-quarter of their boom-time high.
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