[Nate the Great]

So I'm watching "The Way of the Warrior" again and notice that Kasidy says that Cestus III is eight weeks away at maximum warp...

PNQ1: Is that "maximum warp" for her ship specifically (i.e. her freighter can only go warp six or something), or is "maximum warp" just shorthand for the fastest any starship can go at the moment (i.e. warp 9.9)?
PNQ2: How large is the Federation in the 24th century?
PNQ3: Should there be a practical maximum size for a nation-state in terms of travel time?
PNQ4: In "Family Business" a one-way subspace transmission takes two weeks to get to DS9 from Cestus III, doesn't this seem odd (i.e. subspace should be way more than four times faster than maximum warp)?

Memory Alpha indicates that the Federation is eight thousand years across, which would be eight years of maximum warp according to the Voyager scale.

However, it seems reasonable that you could "slow down" Voyager and say that 1000 LY/yr is based on less than maximum possible warp. That is, if Voyager was in the Federation and could regularly stop at starbases for refit and maintenance it could go much faster than 1000 LY/yr. The slower speed is a result of the need for more frequent stops for maintenance.

So let's say that if supported by a network of starbases and regular supply stops at Federation worlds a starship can go 2000 LY/yr. That's still four years to travel across the whole thing.

As for the two week transmission from Cestus III, I hope that's a combination of outdated civilian subspace technology and some sort of black hole/nebula/subspace anomaly causing interference between here and there, and it really doesn't take that long to transmit a message across the Federation.

As an aside, I am appalled at the inconsistencies of how fast warp factors are, even if we limit ourselves to the 24th century (23rd century speeds being on a different scale is already well-known). And if you look at how Enterprise tortures the scale from episode to episode, it gets downright painful.