localhost vs real ip address

Question

What is the difference between the localhost and the real ip address?

If I access an application by using http://localhost:8080/index.html and ht

Answer 1

From Wikipedia, the pertinent points:

Communicating with the loopback interface in an identical manner as with another computers on the network, but bypassing the local network interface hardware, is useful for the purposes of testing software.

Connecting to locally hosted network services, such as a computer game server, or for other inter-process communications, can be performed through loopback addresses in a highly efficient manner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Localhost