Legacy Upgrades: The struggle of retrofitting OSDP on existing Wiegand infrastructure without a full re-wire.

Hi all,

I’m currently looking at a retrofit project for a commercial site that wants to ditch their old Wiegand readers for something more secure—ideally OSDP v2 to meet their new IT insurance requirements.

The headache is the existing cabling. It’s mostly unshielded, and as we know, OSDP over long runs can be finicky without proper twisted pairs. I’m trying to avoid a full re-wire if possible, but I'm worried about the data integrity for their higher-security zones.

Has anyone here had success using OSDP converters on legacy cables for high-stakes areas? Or is it always a case of "pull new copper or don't bother" when it comes to meeting modern audit standards?

Would love to hear some field experience on where you draw the line between 'secure enough' and a total infrastructure overhaul.