Let me congratulate myself for wasting everybodys time!
ChrisCW - you were right all along - it was indeed a firewall issue - although not on the red hat box. One of the network people had decided that since they had a new firewall to play with, they might as well do just that. The red hat box was in the DMZ, and no ftp was allowed from DMZ to LAN...
Morsing,
Thank you were much for sticking up with me, I really appreciate that there are still people like you who,in their own time, try to help people like me. Thank you.