This is the TechEmpower plaintext benchmark (http://frameworkbenchmarks.readthedocs.org/en/latest/Project...). I'd agree that it's kind of a micro-benchmark. There are other TE benchmarks that test more real-world web application scenarios.

My understanding is that the ASP.NET team started at the bottom of the stack and is working their way up. They want to get fundamental HTTP serving basics nailed first. I think that makes sense - they were getting around 170k rps in September, so there were definitely some things to sort out at the basic HTTP serving layer.