Proximity Cards and Card Formats

When utilizing a proximity card-based Access control system, you will often find the need to re-order proximity cards as employees come and go. The basic information that is needed to order a proximity card is the card format, the facility code and the card number.

The card format is perhaps the most critical element is it often dictates whether the card can even be re-ordered. More specifically, the card format defines whether the prox card is considered an "open format" or a "proprietary" format. If the proximity card is an open format, it can be readily reordered, but if it is of a proprietary format, you may need to get special permission to re-order theprox card from your proximity card installer or integrator.

The term card format is sometimes confusing as terms are often used broadly. For instance, the term Wiegand is often used as an adjective to specify several characteristics related to access control readers and prox cards and HID customers often think of the "Wiegand format" as to the general concept of security card data encoding. However, for the purpose of this article, we are focused on the Weigand Card Format which is used to specify that a proximity card uses that a 26-bit encoding; in other words, the card format does not refer to the size or other dimensional aspect of a prox card but to the size of the data and its structure. The Wiegand format is a 26-bit format and is widely used in HID cards, HID key fobs, HID tags and other types of credentials. Typically, this 26-bit format is an "open format" as opposed to a "proprietary" format meaning that the cards can be readily reordered. Also, most HID access control systems utilize this 26-bit format as it originated with true Wiegand swipe card technology.

The standard Wiegand 26-bit format (also referred to by HID as H10301) uses bit 1 for the leading parity bit, bits 2-9 for the facility code, bits 10-25 for the card number and bit 26 for the trailing parity bit. The facility code is typically assigned to an access control system whereas the card number is the incrementing part of the prox card and essentially assigns an individual to a card.
Other formats are sometimes used in proximity-based control systems but they are not open. These other prox card formats can either use a 26-bit format in which case the size and or order of the prox card facility code and card number are different that the standard H10301 format, or a longer bit format such as a 36-bit format.

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