RouterTech - an alternative to OpenWRT and improved D-Link 500T

I use already quite old D-Link DSL-500T. Not long ago, I was bored with his glitches, and I decided to either try to flash it to a more stable firmware, or change the router. It was not easy to find a better firmware, since D-Link had already ceased to support it, alternative firmware from McMCC also stopped coming out. But then suddenly found RouterTech.

RouterTech

RouterTech is an alternative firmware for modems on a fairly old AR7 platform.
The project has been actively developing since 2006 to this day, the latest firmware version was released on January 10th of this year. The most interesting is that the project does not even have an article in Wikipedia, it has never been mentioned on Habrahabr, and in general it is not easy to find a mention of it.
The firmware is designed for both conventional routers and Wi-Fi.
List of supported models.

This is the web interface:

Flashing

The main disadvantages of the official firmware for me are regularly (once every 2-3 days) Port Forwarding settings that fly off, periodic hangs, not working UPNP.
Flashing the modem was not difficult, just run the utility from the same RouterTech, which makes backup firmware and settings, and also indicates whether the firmware is possible at all. I was flashing through the web interface; after flashing, all that was required to bring the modem into a fully operational state is to select the appropriate LED configuration in the settings.
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Advantages over official firmware:

• Overall speed and stability
• High-quality and beautiful web interface
• Rshaper and Netshaper - limiting traffic and speed
• darkstat is pretty good statistics
• UPnP works
• cron
• QoS

In general, a list of features compared to some standard firmware can be read here .

As a conclusion

I hope I could help someone from the users of modems compatible with this firmware. Also I remind you that you should not do the firmware if you do not fully understand their actions and their results, you can break your device.

RouterTech website
UPD A very simple comparison with OpenWRT (I didn’t use it, I can’t describe it in detail) at the request of readers. RouterTech is focused only on the AR7 platform, OpenWRT on many platforms including the AR7. RouterTech out of the box has a panel and is equipped with a set of software, OpenWRT is “clean”. But in general, the support for hardware, software, and the capabilities of OpenWRT is much steeper, however, this will have to be collected by yourself, unlike RouterTech.