A method includes determining, by a computing device of a dispersed storage network (DSN), routing path performance information of a set of routing paths with respect to a set of storage units of the DSN. The method further includes adjusting a pillar width to decode threshold ratio of a dispersed storage error encoding function when the routing path performance information deviates from a performance threshold. The performance threshold includes a first error rate threshold and a second error rate threshold. The method further includes dispersed storage error encoding a data object using the adjusted pillar width to decode threshold ratio to produce a plurality of sets of encoded data slices. The method further includes sending the plurality of sets of encoded data slices to the set of storage units via the set of routing paths for storage therein.