You know what else crosses ISO/OSI layer boundaries? Switches. But I don't see anyone saying hubbed networks are better.
And realistically how often are you going to change your "transport"? And if you added an abstraction layer would that actually make it any easier? Stuff like SOAP ends up being the inner-platform effect where you reimplement all of HTTP on top of HTTP and actually implementing a new SOAP transport is just as hard as porting your protocol use a second "transport" if you actually needed to (which you probably won't).
> You know what else crosses ISO/OSI layer boundaries? Switches.
No, they do not. Switches work at L2 and are only interested in L2 concepts (MAC addresses). They work transparently for any application that is not crossing the L1/L2 boundary. Routers are L3.
they might be talking about switches that also have routers, which is common enough these days to think they are one in the same (they are not, as you noted)
And realistically how often are you going to change your "transport"? And if you added an abstraction layer would that actually make it any easier? Stuff like SOAP ends up being the inner-platform effect where you reimplement all of HTTP on top of HTTP and actually implementing a new SOAP transport is just as hard as porting your protocol use a second "transport" if you actually needed to (which you probably won't).