Internet was developed as a packet data network where users and data sources (server) with specific IP addresses interacted over a pre-established communication channel. This model of client-server data communication has evolved into a peer-to-peer mode of data sharing in recent times. Applications like, YouTube, Bit Torrent, social networks have revolutionized the idea of user generated contents. Modern users care only for specific data items irrespective of their sources. So, the idea of using IP addresses to identify servers hosting a particular content is losing its importance. Moreover, want of IP addresses is a challenging issue haunting the Internet community since long. The need of the time is a content-centric networking platform where data hosts are of less importance, and Named Data Networking (NDN) has been proposed to that end. NDN allows users to float a data request without any knowledge about the hosting entity. NDN can handle user mobility, security issues more efficiently than the current Internet. Although NDN has been proposed in 2010, so far, there is no survey paper studying its architecture and various schemes proposed for its different characteristic features, like, naming, adaptive forwarding and routing, caching, security, mobility, etc. In this paper, we introduce a novel taxonomy to study NDN features in depth. We have also covered several NDN applications. We conclude our survey by identifying a set of open challenges which should be addressed by researchers in due course. © 2016 Elsevier Inc.