I'm trying to map a linux network drive to my windows 7 laptop, however this laptop is not on LAN. At home, I simply use Samba, but this obviously won't work over the internet.

I'm trying to avoid VPN, so if there are other solutions, I would like to know about them. The reason I ask is because my university does this as well. We can simply map folders to our computers without VPN connections. I'm not sure what they are running as servers.

The main reason is because I want to be able to access my files stored on my home server wherever I go. They are located in the /home/ folder (videos, music and pictures folder). I'm trying to keep my websites and media separate from each other.

I wouldn't mind accessing them from a web interface either, but I would like to keep the directory structure intact. I remember having an app like that come with winamp and running it on my windows pc (As the server). Unfortunately it doesn't work for linux.

Any ideas on what I could use? Would XBMC be able to help me out with this?

I did do some researching but I couldn't find any concrete answers