Abstract Content-Centric Networking (CCN) is a candidate future Internet architecture that gives favourable promises in distributed wireless environments. The latter ones seriously call into question the capability of TCP/IP to support stable end-to-end communications, due to lack of centralized control, node mobility, dynamic topologies, intermittent connectivity, and harsh signal propagation conditions. The CCN paradigm, relying on name-based forwarding and in-network data caching , has great potential to solve some of the problems encountered by IP-based protocols in wireless networks. In this paper, we examine the applicability of CCN principles to wireless networks with distributed access control, different degrees of node mobility and resource constraints. We provide some guidelines for readers approaching research on CCN, by highlighting points of strength and weaknesses and reviewing the current state of the art. The final discussion aims to identify the main open research challenges and some future trends for CCN deployment on a large scale.