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It's normal for a laptop to have more USB port controllers than actual ports.
That fingerprint reader is soldered to an USB 'port', and the webcams are usually soldered to an USB 'port' as well. It's like they were USB devices connected to an USB port, just that the 'port' they use is not soldered to the female USB plug, but directly soldered to the cable leading to that device.
Quite a few times laptops don't use all the USB ports they could, as the controllers and stuff to make the port work are physically located on the board's chipset (the component responsible of operating all ports on a motherboard, although more modern processors contain RAM and PCIe 3.0 controllers in them), and the chipset is made to fit models in all price ranges to be mass-produced in huge numbers to cut costs.
Which is why for most devices that don't need a particularly big bandwith they prefer to use USB controllers, instead of wasting much more valuable PCI express 2.0 or 3.0 lanes (3.0 usually reserved for graphics and 2.0 for wifi/bluetooth/3G modems on mini-PCIe cards and other laptop expansion card slots)
A few brave geeks did open their laptops (or netbooks) and soldered devices like say bluetooth/wifi dongles or 3G modems to some of such unused ports, and the devices got recognized and worked.
USB root hubs are the same thing as the external USB hubs, that is they share a single USB connection's bandwith over multiple USB controllers and thus ports (also USB power is shared so 500 mA per hub). Probably they do something else more technical as well as they are always there anyway, but the above is what matters.
If each port has its own hub, then each port has full USB 2 bandwith (and power, so 500 mA per port).
As for USB host controllers, each USB port has its own, regardless of the port being soldered to a female USB plug or not (again because this stuff is in the chipset). Sometimes there are some USB controller designs that decide to have more than a single controller, and have one for USB 1.1 devices (legacy) and one for USB 2.0 devices. These additional controllers for Win 7 have names like the ones you see (those are generic names for a catch-all driver).
The communication is USB device-USB controller-USB root hub-RAM-CPU, and is in packets as it's easier to find mistakes and correct them that way. There are a few different packets depending on what is the usage.
That fingerprint reader is soldered to an USB 'port', and the webcams are usually soldered to an USB 'port' as well. It's like they were USB devices connected to an USB port, just that the 'port' they use is not soldered to the female USB plug, but directly soldered to the cable leading to that device.
Quite a few times laptops don't use all the USB ports they could, as the controllers and stuff to make the port work are physically located on the board's chipset (the component responsible of operating all ports on a motherboard, although more modern processors contain RAM and PCIe 3.0 controllers in them), and the chipset is made to fit models in all price ranges to be mass-produced in huge numbers to cut costs.
Which is why for most devices that don't need a particularly big bandwith they prefer to use USB controllers, instead of wasting much more valuable PCI express 2.0 or 3.0 lanes (3.0 usually reserved for graphics and 2.0 for wifi/bluetooth/3G modems on mini-PCIe cards and other laptop expansion card slots)
A few brave geeks did open their laptops (or netbooks) and soldered devices like say bluetooth/wifi dongles or 3G modems to some of such unused ports, and the devices got recognized and worked.
USB root hubs are the same thing as the external USB hubs, that is they share a single USB connection's bandwith over multiple USB controllers and thus ports (also USB power is shared so 500 mA per hub). Probably they do something else more technical as well as they are always there anyway, but the above is what matters.
If each port has its own hub, then each port has full USB 2 bandwith (and power, so 500 mA per port).
As for USB host controllers, each USB port has its own, regardless of the port being soldered to a female USB plug or not (again because this stuff is in the chipset). Sometimes there are some USB controller designs that decide to have more than a single controller, and have one for USB 1.1 devices (legacy) and one for USB 2.0 devices. These additional controllers for Win 7 have names like the ones you see (those are generic names for a catch-all driver).
The communication is USB device-USB controller-USB root hub-RAM-CPU, and is in packets as it's easier to find mistakes and correct them that way. There are a few different packets depending on what is the usage.