1. A method comprises: determining, by a first device, an error coding distributed routing protocol; transmitting, by the first device, a set of encoded data slices, identity of a second device, and the error coding distributed routing protocol to a network, wherein the set of encoded data slices represents data that has been dispersed storage error encoded; routing, by the network, a plurality of sub-sets of the set of encoded data slices via an initial plurality of routing paths towards the second device in accordance with the error coding distributed routing protocol; comparing, by the network, anticipated routing performance of the routing of the plurality of sub-sets with a desired routing performance; when the comparison of a routing path of the initial plurality of routing paths is unfavorable, altering the routing path to obtain a favorable comparison; receiving, by the second device, at least some of the set of encoded data slices from the network; and when at least a threshold number of encoded data slices have been received, decoding, by the second device, the at least a threshold number of encoded data slices to reproduce the data.