1. A method for execution by one or more processing devices of one or more computing devices regarding a read request operation, the method comprises: generating, by the one or more processing devices, a set of read requests regarding the read request operation for reading a dispersed storage error encoded data segment, wherein the dispersed error encoded data segment is stored in multiple storage units as a plurality of encoded data slices, wherein generating a read request of the set of read requests includes: generating, by the one or more processing devices, a payload section of a dispersed storage network (DSN) frame by: generating a slice name field of the payload section to include a slice name corresponding to one of the plurality of encoded data slices; and generating a transaction number field of the payload section to include a transaction number corresponding to the read request operation; and generating a protocol header of the DSN frame by: generating a payload length field of the protocol header to include a payload length that represents a length of the payload section; and generating remaining fields of the protocol header; and determining a length of the transaction number; determining a length for the slice name; and generating the payload length for the payload length field based on the length of the transaction number, the length for the slice name, and the number of slice names of the one or more slices names; and outputting, as the set of read requests, DSN frames to at least some of the multiple storage units.