Blocked high ports

[Bradley M Alexander <storm@tux.org>]

Hello all,

Got a problem that is driving me nuts. It is affecting both my laptop
(Toshiba Satellite 4080XCDT) and my desktop (K6-2/450) machine.

I installed Debian/Slink afresh on defiant (the desktop) over the weekend,
and immediately upgraded it to Potato. defiant is dns and dhcp server fro
my home network. Got the dns tables set back up, and noticed that nothing
on the network was able to do DNS queries. Started doing a bit of digging,
and also noticed I could only ftp in passive mode. Normally ftp connects,
then switches that connection to an arbitrary hign (>1024) port. The two
systems would connect, then nothing would happen.

I checked /var/log/syslog and saw connection refused messages as far as
the eye could see. Blocking connections from the local nodes,
E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET (one of the top-level DNS'), etc. I tried telnetting
into the localhost on an arbitrary port:

[storm@riogrande storm]$ telnet localhost 6699
Trying 127.0.0.1...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

I have set up hosts.allow/hosts.deny to allow everything from the local
network. What file am I missing that is blocking the high ports? 

Please CC me directly in your responses.

Thanks,
--Brad