Multi-hop Wireless LAN-based mesh network (WMN) provides high capacity and self-configuring capabilities. Due to data forwarding and path selection based on MAC address, WMN requires additional operations to achieve global connectivity using IPv6 address. The neighbor discovery operation over WLAN mesh networks requires repeated all-node broadcasting and this gives rise to a big burden in the entire mesh networks. In this letter, we propose the proxy neighbor discovery scheme for optimized IPv6 communication over WMN to reduce network overhead and communication latency. Using simulation experiments, we show that the control overhead and communication setup latency can be significantly reduced using the proxy-based neighbor discovery mechanism.