Can I setup a ReadyNAS home network without internet?

You can use it just fine without an Internet connection. You can discover the NAS using RAIDar (http://www.readynas.com/downloads)

If you know the I.P. address of the NAS you could go to https://ip.address.of.nas/admin in your web browser

Oh ok cool. I presume it's easy to find the IP of the NAS? Is it set by RAIDar?

The I.P. is assigned by your router. If the NAS does not receive an I.P. it will self-assign 192.168.168.168

When logged into the web admin you can set a custom static I.P. if you wish (but it is best to get the I.P. from your router. You can assign a static I.P. to your NAS from your router).

OK thanks. Do I do that via a web browser to access the router's setup system, and to set an IP for the NAS?

The best way is to reserve an IP address for the NAS in the router setup, leaving the NAS set up to use DHCP.

The second best way is to assign a suitable static IP address in the NAS itself.

Slightly off topic ,but why do you suggest that ip from dhcp is better than static ip?
I only use my router as a gateway to WAN. I have a switch to which all my devices and a wireless AP are connected. All wireless clients run fixed ip addresses. I only use dhcp for wifi guests.

You have made me think that I may be running an inefficient LAN

If you have the knowledge/experience on how to setup static ips, there is nothing wrong with that.

DHCP is simply easier for the less technically advanced users, ips will be centrally and automatically managed by the dhcp server, its one less thing that has to be managed manually.

vandermerwe wrote:
Slightly off topic ,but why do you suggest that ip from dhcp is better than static ip? I only use my router as a gateway to WAN. I have a switch to which all my devices and a wireless AP are connected. All wireless clients run fixed ip addresses. I only use dhcp for wifi guests. You have made me think that I may be running an inefficient LAN

Often users will migrate to a new router which uses a different IP address space. Then they can no longer connect to the NAS because the static IP address is not in the range used by the new router. In the forum, we often end up walking them through the fix for this (either direct-connect with a suitable IP address setting for their PC or an OS reinstall). Reserving addresses avoids this problem.

Most of my WiFi devices are used on other networks when I travel. So there is no way I would ever use static addresses for my wireless devices. However, I do reserve IP addresses in the router.

There is no efficiency advantage either way. Just that reserving addresses in the router is a bit more robust, in that all the client equipment will still work properly when it is migrated to a different network.