(FORTUNE Magazine) – Listening to a John Chambers speech today is an astonishing experience. The world couldn't be more different from what it was three years ago, when Cisco briefly had the biggest market capitalization of any corporation on the planet ($531 billion). But in fundamental ways, the CEO's speeches haven't changed at all. They're still about the power of the Internet to revolutionize the business world, and implicitly about how Cisco makes out like a bandit selling the gear that enables all that. Chambers still sprinkles his remarks with references to top bureaucrats and heads of state who have signed on to his vision. And he still encourages the rest of the business world to look to Cisco as the best example of what will be possible. It's hokey, self-serving, and sanctimonious at the same time. It also happens to be right. Internet traffic continues to double every year, and Cisco dominates the market for corporate networking gear in ways that only two other corporations, IBM in the 1970s and Microsoft, have been able to muster. Its $127 billion market cap remains the 14th biggest in the U.S. While Chambers is indisputably less powerful than he once was--his shtick has certainly worn thin with investors who bet on Cisco in 2000, before the stock fell by 90%--he's still here. Get used to it. --F.V.