With the upheavals of the past 15 months, it’s not surprising that the industry is placing so much emphasis on what old-timers used to call “Layer 8” of the seven-layer OSI stack. For those who didn’t grow up on the OSI model, it envisions a networking stack with the physical medium (copper, fiber, radio frequencies) at the bottom, and builds up to the Application layer — Layer 7 — at the top. So, what’s Layer 8? It’s the person using that application. Techie wit has always been pretty dry.
