i recently upgraded our c# Web Applications to use .net framework 4.6.1 from 4.5 and only today noticed in the web.configs the .net version differs from the .net version. Everything seems to work fine in production but my questions is, since the httpRuntime did not auto change to 4.6.1, i'm curious if thats intentional or do i need to manually key that in or is there some other reason for it to be on 4.5?
The main purpose of runtime target framework is for compatibility. Some breaking change may be introduced in the new version of asp.net. In order not to break the existing application, the breaking change is quirked through the target framework. You can find more details through this blog.