opening ports

[Bruce]

Hi,

About 3 or 4 months ago I installed Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake.  At the 
time I attempted to set up ftp.  I don't have notes on everything I did, 
but I am sure that I did an apt-get install proftpd (I often used this 
on Debian machines).  It wouldn't work.  I tried lots of things, read up 
on IP Tables and made modifications there, and did a lot of Goggling.  I 
did quite a bit of reading on Ubuntu help pages.  I have heard 
suggestions that ports are now turned off by default (the world would be 
a safer place if someone would tell M$ about ports being off by 
default).  I was able to get sftp working, but I never knew exactly what 
I did differently with sftp (got it to work) and ftp (did not get it to 
work).  The slower transfers of sftp are annoying on large files (3GB - 
4GB) so I have never been happy with sftp.
Now I am ready to try ftp again.  I assume that I am missing something 
really simple.  If it were tough I would have found something in the 
FAQs and Goggle searches.  Rather than beat my head against the wall 
some more I'll just ask the questions:

1) How would I open ftp ports after doing an apt-get install proftpd?

2) What is the initial port configuration for Dapper Drake and how do we 
control the opening and closing of ports for various "apt-get"  packages 
and for "home brew" code such as perl networking code development?

Thank you,
Bruce