Understanding the Statistics Bars

SL has provided us with a couple of technical measures - packet loss and bandwidth. I know what they are but ... so what? Red is bad and I understand % packet loss but red in bandwidth ... is red bad, too, especially when we can increase the maximum bandwidth in Edit/Preferences/Network?

Also, is there a clear presentation of these 2 measures as well as the Statistics Bar available in View?

Thanks ...

I won't try to speak of crashes since I built my system and must endure but it would be cool to know if a crash to desktop out of SL and a reboot of the entire system - crash back to POST - are related. One is software probably and the other due to hardware, I think ... anyway, the help here has always been super ... thanks!

AMD 64 X2 +5600 (have disabled one CPU for SL), nVidia GeForce 7300 GS, 2GB DDR2 RAM

All I know is when the packet loss is running really on low end its hard to build, walk and interact with world. I could barely walk for months until I reduced all my graphic settings.
I would love to understand this myself because I am using really low end cable connection. For certain features like audio I got pop up saying I needed 768 of something of bandwidth so often because my connections tiny bit faster then 56k modem when I clocked it even though it says its 256 often watching movies or videos depending on my isp can be major issues.
I am using only Pentinum 4 2533mhz nividia 6200 and 768 ram and I can't afford a upgrade