As long as the master node's radio is idling in RX, I think this would be interpreted as "connected to the mesh." Otherwise, user code written for both master and child nodes might end up calling renewAddress() on master node if their code doesn't understand that it is running the master node. I see no considerations in renewAddress() (& its helper requestAddress()) when the node ID is set to 0.
Originally posted by @2bndy5 in #250 (comment)