LFS 9.1 and networking

After much trial and error, I have completed two builds of LFS 9.1. One of them can ping to another machine on the LAN, but no other networking actions are functioning. The other has a message during bootup "eth0 does not exist". I have tried numerous things to get ftp (on the working eth0 setup) to do anything other than start and stop; it cannot see other machines on the LAN even though a ping proves that the OS can reach them. Yes, I know that ftp is not secure, but this is only on my LAN and so I mostly concerned about getting what is apparently the only built-in LFS 9.1 networking function to be able to reach out to other machines. All the ftp can do so far is start/stop, display a prompt, and list the internal functions when replying to a typed-in '?' character.

Comment is invited.