The direct modulation performance of a reconstruction-equivalent-chirp distributed feedback laser diode was experimentally investigated. The frequency response and the dynamic range were measured and analyzed. The influence on the direct modulation performance caused by the bias current of the laser diode and the RF power of the modulated signal was also investigated. Error-free transmission of a 300 Mb/s baseband signal together with a 1.562 5 Gb/s ultra-wideband signal in a 10 km single mode fiber using the distributed feedback laser diode was achieved. The power penalties of the baseband signal and the ultra-wideband signal were 1.98 dB and 0.92 dB, respectively. The distributed feedback laser diode can find applications in the wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network based hybrid networks.