Very frustrating FTP issue Not permissions or firewall

I’ve been using WordPress for a few years on an older version of Centos (4) I’ve just built a new box with Centos 6.3 (webserver install)

I have WordPress up and running but cannot update or install plugins via FTP.

I’ve tried the network with no firewall. I’ve chmoded the WP directory with 777.

I can FTP to the root WordPress folder and read and write with FileZilla. I can access the folder through a browser via ftp. WordPress instantly returns “Failed to connect to FTP Server xx.xxx.xxx.xx:21”

In the past, I’ve always built php and mysql from the source, but this time used yum. Could it be that WordPress requires some php module to FTP and that module is missing?

The FTP server is ProFTP – same config as the older machine that has no WordPress FTP problems. Webserver is apache

Any and all suggestions are welcome.