Can't Even Google This One!

Mr. Rodrigues writes..

Hello,

I love the show. I listen to it regularly. I get most of my additional IT knowledge from you … and Google.

This time even Google can’t help, because I don’t even know what to search for. I don’t know what the name of this is. I’m blanking on terminology.

Some facts.  From your computer inside your home (or a company) you can make a connection to a web server, but web server can’t connect to your home computer. You can make a connection out but only replies to your request gets back to your computer.

Here is the unknown part.
How to connect from internet to your home computer directly without opening ports, no VPN? So when you are not at home, you first connect to your server somewhere on public internet and from there you can connect to your home computer - after this ‘jumping’ you have direct connection to your home computer - data doesn’t travel from you to your server and then to your home computer, data travels directly from you to your home computer. Your home computer keeps connection to YOUR server alive, so your server can “connect” to your computer and do stuff. I hope I’ve described the unknown enough so you could help me.

How do you call that (what I’ve just described)? What services can you run this way? Can I connect from internet to my home computer and access files from a file explorer? Or can I connect this way only to my OwnCloud instance at home?

How to setup this? Are there packages for Linux and FreeBSD? Who takes care of secure connection from your computer to your home computer?

I hope I was clear enough so you can help me. If possible give me detailed description as possible.

Thank you very much.

Best regards,
Mr. Rodrigues