The Farstream (formerly Farsight) project is an effort to create
a framework to deal with all known audio/video conferencing protocols.
On one side it offers a generic API that makes it possible to write
plugins for different streaming protocols, on the other side it
offers an API for clients to use those plugins.

The main target clients for Farstream are Instant Messaging
applications. These applications should be able to use Farstream
for all their Audio/Video conferencing needs without having to
worry about any of the lower level streaming and NAT traversal
issues.

Farstream forms an integral part of the Telepathy framework. It is
used by Empathy through the Telepathy-Farstream library. The
Telepathy-Farstream library binds it to the Connection Managers
via D-Bus and the Telepathy Media Stream Spec and is used for all
their streaming requirements.