The response from the stage was classic Chambers: "You may not agree with everything I say, but the one thing you will find is that Cisco is proud of what we do in business, what we do in our customers, how we treat people -- whether it's our 13,000 vendors, our 4,600 contractors, or how we are (one of) the top 10 places to work in every part of the world," he said, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the chanting.

In a prepared statement about the protest, Cisco said it has rapidly reduced its cost structure as a result of the recession. "We respect and support the rights of our vendors' employees to fair treatment and to voice their concerns," the statement said.

It might have been a rocky morning for anyone but the unflappable Chambers, who roamed among the audience throughout a 90-minute speech that covered mostly familiar ground, promoting the power of networking to increase productivity, cut costs and help companies move quickly. He repeated Cisco's mantra that getting the maximum benefit of networking requires an end-to-end architecture rather than just a series of standalone products.

One longtime Cisco customer left the keynote with an upbeat perspective. David Friedhoff, a computer scientist at a U.S. government agency, said it's not always possible to use Cisco from end to end, both because of bidding procedures and other factors. But Cisco has gotten better at making its gear work with other vendors' products in recent years, Friedhoff said.