Asynchronous page processing
As an introduction let’s see how ASP.NET supports asynchronous calls behind pages. Although we can use our own threading mechanism and avoid what is offered by ASP.NET it is more safe and time saving to use ASP.NET own infrastructure.
The image on right that I stole from MSDN article Asynchronous Pages in ASP.NET 2.0 shows you how synchronous and asynchronous pages are processed by ASP.NET. I recommend to read this MSDN article because you can find also other methods for asynchronous calls. I will introduce you how to use PageAsyncTask based calls.
If you look at diagram on right you can see that asynchronous processing of registered tasks happens between PreRender and PreRenderComplete events in separate threads.
Read more: Gunnar Peipman's ASP.NET blog