I was able to get it working through HTTP using a WebDAV enabled folder with Apache and mapping the web folder to a drive letter... It was a pain to get it set up and took me all day (just started messing with Apache that day), but it worked alright. I can't really give a good tutorial because most of the ones I found had incorrect information and I pieced the info together to get it to work. I'm not at work right now so I don't have access to my config file. Just know it's possible to run WPI through HTTP with WebDAV.
As for running it from the network, there's a batch file someone wrote to map the share to a drive letter, allowing you to easily use WPI from a network share. I use this all the time myself. The post with the script is
here