sshfs is used to mount a network share (much like the Windows shares) except using ssh to transfer the data. Using sshfs has the benefit that all data and authentication packets are encrypted. Using sshfs as a normal user is very simple, you just make yourself a mount point with the following command

mkdir share

and then you mount the remote share with this command

sshfs username@server.com:/share share

That's it! Now your share directory looks like the remote share. When you're done you use the following command to unmount it

fusermount -u share

sshfs uses the "fuse" kernel module so if it gives you some error that indicates that it couldn't access /dev/fuse, then issue the following commmand (as root or sudo) to load it

modprobe fuse

You can also put the word "fuse" into the appropriate file for your distro (/etc/modules for Debian) to have the module loaded at every startup.

sshfs has some options that you might want to look at if you are using it over an unreliable connection or a connection with a large delay. Look at the man page for the timeout options and the reconnect option.