Host & drivers

The host side drives a device - virtual or real - over the same transport.

Handle - libusb-shaped transfers

usbip.open() (or usbip_host_open_vid_pid() in C) returns a Handle with control / bulk / interrupt / isochronous transfers. Porting libusb code is essentially s/libusb_/usbip_host_/.

h = usbip.open(0x1209, 0x0001)
h.control(0x80, 0x06, 0x0100, 0, 18)   # GET_DESCRIPTOR(device)
h.bulk_out(0x01, b"...")               # OUT
data = h.bulk_in(0x81, 64)             # IN
h.close()

Isochronous transfers use the libusb alloc/fill/submit model (usbip_host_alloc_transfer / usbip_host_fill_iso_transfer / usbip_host_submit_transfer / iso_packet_desc[] in C; iso_in / iso_out on the Python Handle), submitted synchronously.

Driver - bind by class

For something reusable, a Driver (Python) or usbip_host_driver (C) binds to a device by class code. The bundled host drivers open with Driver.open():

from usbip.classes.host.mtp import MtpHost

with MtpHost.open(0x1209, 0x0009) as mtp:
    ...                                # browse / pull / push files

See Host driver, the Host API and Host drivers.