DNS entries, webserver, and forwarding requests

[Colin J. White]

I'm not sure what the possible solutions are for the following
problem, bear with me as I may not be using the correct terminology.

I have a website with a dns entry as www.foo.com.  The site has many
different areas, e.g. www.foo.com/bar/ and www.foo.com/bar/ed/.  A
portion of the site (www.foo.com/bar/ed/) has requested that all
requests going to ed.foo.com and www.ed.foo.com (actually any
*ed.foo.com) is redirected to www.foo.com/bar/ed/.  What are possible
solutions to this request?  I am not to familiar with what is possible
with dns.  Read on for clarification.

I have setup 2 virtual servers with my webserver, one to handle
ed.foo.com and one to handle www.ed.foo.com.  For both I have set
their docs directory to docs/bar/ed/.  Then a dns entry was added for
both virtual servers to point to the same IP as www.foo.com.  The
webserver handles the requests, but . . . this does not seem like a
great solution.  Anyone else that requests similar treatment means I
need to setup 2 virtual servers (one for a www url request and one for
a non-www url request) to fill the request.  What are the possible
solutions for this?  What is the exact name of what I am attempting to
accomplish, i.e. url forwarding?