We have an ecommerce site right now that carries a range of brands. The brand pages carry urls as follows:

1. `http://www.<DOMAIN>.com/catalog/brand/view?id=2`

We need to utilize more friendly (seo-friendly) urls such as:

2. `http://www.<DOMAIN>.com/<BRAND>`

but such that it would resolve #1 above.

Is this done in .htaccess files in the root? If so, what is the correct way to go about this?

Keep in mind URL#1 is the legitimate address, but we want to utilize the URL#2 format for linking. It's not a 301 type redirect is it? That's more "permanent" unless I misunderstood it or something, no?

Many thanks.