Oracle VM VirtualBox supports passing through USB devices which are exposed over the network using the USB over IP protocol without the need to configure the client side provided by the kernel and usbip tools. Furthermore, this feature works with Oracle VM VirtualBox running on any supported host, rather than just Linux alone, as is the case with the official client.

To enable support for passing through USB/IP devices, use the following command to add the device server that exports the devices:

VBoxManage usbdevsource add unique-name --backend USBIP --address device-server[:port]

USB devices exported on the device server are then accessible through VirtualBox Manager or VBoxManage, like any USB devices attached locally. This can be used multiple times to access different device servers.

To remove a device server, the following command can be used:

$ VBoxManage usbdevsource remove unique-name