This paper proposes an efficient bandwidth utilization (EBU) algorithm that utilizes the unused bandwidth in dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) of a 10-gigabit-capable passive optical network (XGPON). In EBU, an available byte counter of a queue can be negative and the unused remainder of an available byte counter can be utilized by the other queues. In addition, EBU uses a novel polling scheme to collect the requests of queues as soon as possible. We show through analysis and simulations that EBU improves performance compared to that achieved with existing methods. In addition, we describe the hardware implementation of EBU. Finally we show the test results of the hardware implementation of EBU.