wget would not use a proxy unless you configured it to use one in ~/.wgetrc or specified one on the command line. It's most likely a configuration issue on your firewall. What does your ipchains rules look like on your firewall/masq box? "/sbin/ipchains -L".
Also on my machines I have a kernel module loaded called "ip_masq_ftp" which I load in my firewall script with the command: "/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_ftp" Note however that I am running an older version of RedHat on my firewall box (base system is RedHat 6.1 with security updates). I notice on my RH7.2 box these modules do not exist, however there is one called "ip_nat_ftp". Without doing any research to see how ipchains has evolved away from "ip_masq_ftp" I would try loading that module and see if your ftp's start working by typing "/sbin/modprobe ip_nat_ftp" on your firewall machine. Then of course I would search the net for documentation on this weather it works or not.
[ May 05, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]