FTP Questions from a newbie

I've got no experience with using ftp on my SuSE 7.2 box. Could someone tell me about a good resource for getting started please? I've done a search, but I get thousands of hits back (It's impossible to know which ones are relevant without going through them one-by-one). I also need to know how to get ftp working through a firewall and proxy server. Again I've done a search, and again get loads of hits back. Thanks for any help, Gerry.